ericans that, to succeed
there now, they must be either very clever or awfully queer. The Brys are
neither. HE would get on well enough if she'd let him alone; they like
his slang and his brag and his blunders. But Louisa spoils it all by
trying to repress him and put herself forward. If she'd be natural
herself--fat and vulgar and bouncing--it would be all right; but as soon
as she meets anybody smart she tries to be slender and queenly. She
tried it with the Duchess of Beltshire and Lady Skiddaw, and they fled.
I've done my best to make her see her mistake--I've said to her again and
again: 'Just let yourself go, Louisa'; but she keeps up the humbug even
with me--I believe she keeps on being queenly in her own room, with the
door shut.

"The worst of it is," Mrs. Fisher went on, "that she thinks it's all MY
fault. When the Dorsets turned up here six weeks ago, and everybody began
to make a fuss about Lily Bart, I could see Louisa thought that if she'd
had Lily in tow instead of me she would have been hob-nobbing with all
the royalties by this time. She doesn't realize that it's Lily's beauty
that does it: Lord Hubert tells me Lily is thought even handsomer than
when he knew her at Aix ten years ago. It seems she was tremendously
admired there. An Italian Prince, rich and the real thing, wanted to
marry her; but just at the critical moment a good-looking step-son turned
up, and Lily was silly enough to flirt with him while her
marriage-settlements with the step-father were being drawn up. Some
people said the young man did it on purpose. You can fancy the scandal:
there was an awful row between the men, and people began to look at Lily
so queerly that Mrs. Peniston had to pack up and finish her cure
elsewhere. Not that SHE ever understood: to this day she thinks that Aix
didn't suit her, and mentions her having been sent there as proof of the
incompetence of French doctors. That's Lily all over, you know: she works
like a slave preparing the ground and sowing her seed; but the day she
ought to be reaping the harvest she over-sleeps herself or goes off on a
picnic."

Mrs. Fisher paused and looked reflectively at the deep shimmer of sea
between the cactus-flowers. "Sometimes," she added, "I think it's just
flightiness--and sometimes I think it's because, at heart, she despises
the things she's trying for. And it's the difficulty of deciding that
makes her such an interesting study." She glanced tentatively at Selden's