contempt that showed thought on the theme was not new to her. "Perhaps
charity--I dislike the word--may do no good; but friendship from the
rich to the poor must do good; it must lessen class hatreds."

"Are you a socialist?" said Zouroff with a little laugh, and drew back
and let her pass onward.

* * *

"My dear! I never say rude things; but, if you wish me to be sincere, I
confess I think everybody is a little vulgar now, except old women like
me, who adhered to the Faubourg while you all were dancing and changing
your dresses seven times a day at St. Cloud. There is a sort of
vulgarity in the air; it is difficult to escape imbibing it; there is
too little reticence, there is too much tearing about; men are not
well-mannered, and women are too solicitous to please, and too
indifferent how far they stoop in pleasing. It may be the fault of
steam; it may be the fault of smoking; it may come from that flood of
new people of whom 'L'Etrangere' is the scarcely exaggerated sample;
but, whatever it comes from, there it is--a vulgarity that taints
everything, courts and cabinets as well as society. Your daughter
somehow or other has escaped it, and so you find her odd, and the world
thinks her stiff. She is neither; but no dignified long-descended
point-lace, you know, will ever let itself be twisted and twirled into a
cascade and a _fouillis_ like your Bretonne lace that is just the
fashion of the hour, and worth nothing. I admire your Vera very greatly;
she always makes me think of those dear old stately hotels with their
grand gardens in which I saw, in my girlhood, the women who, in theirs,
had known France before '30. These hotels and their gardens are gone,
most of them, and there are stucco and gilt paint in their places. And
here are people who think that a gain. I am not one of them."

_UNDER TWO FLAGS._

The old viscount, haughtiest of haughty nobles, would never abate one
jot of his magnificence; and his sons had but imbibed the teaching of
all that surrounded them; they did but do in manhood what they had been
unconsciously moulded to do in boyhood, when they were sent to Eton at
ten with gold dressing-boxes to grace their dame's tables, embryo dukes
for their co-fags, and tastes that already knew to a nicety the worth of
the champagnes at Christopher's. The old, old story--how it repeats
itself! Boys grow up amidst profuse prodigality, and are launched into a
world where they can