it a very nice place. It had a mixture of the
homely and the liberal, and though it was almost a
museum, the large, little-used rooms were as fresh
and clean as a well-kept dairy. Lizzie Acton told
her that she dusted all the pagodas and other curiosities
every day with her own hands; and the Baroness answered
that she was evidently a household fairy. Lizzie
had not at all the look of a young lady who dusted
things; she wore such pretty dresses and had such
delicate fingers that it was difficult to imagine
her immersed in sordid cares. She came to meet
Madame M; auunster on her arrival, but she said nothing,
or almost nothing, and the Baroness again reflected—she
had had occasion to do so before—that American
girls had no manners. She disliked this little
American girl, and she was quite prepared to learn
that she had failed to commend herself to Miss Acton.
Lizzie struck her as positive and explicit almost
to pertness; and the idea of her combining the apparent
incongruities of a taste for housework and the wearing
of fresh, Parisian-looking dresses suggested the possession
of a dangerous energy. It was a source of irritation
to the Baroness that in this country it should seem
to matter whether a little girl were a trifle less
or a trifle more of a nonentity; for Eugenia had hitherto
been conscious of no moral pressure as regards the
appreciation of diminutive virgins. It was perhaps
an indication of Lizzie’s pertness that she very
soon retired and left the Baroness on her brother’s
hands. Acton talked a great deal about his chinoiseries;
he knew a good deal about porcelain and bric-a-brac.
The Baroness, in her progress through the house, made,
as it were, a great many stations. She sat down
everywhere, confessed to being a little tired, and
asked about the various objects with a curious mixture
of alertness and inattention. If there had been
any one to say it to she would have declared that
she was positively in love with her host; but she
could hardly make this declaration—even
in the strictest confidence—to Acton himself.
It gave her, nevertheless, a pleasure that had some
of the charm of unwontedness to feel, with that admirable
keenness with which she was capable of feeling things,
that he had a disposition without any edges; that
even his humorous irony always expanded toward the
point. One’s impression of his honesty was
almost like carrying a bunch of flowers; the perfume
was most agreeable, but they were occasionally an
inconvenience. One could trust him, at any rate,
round all the corners of the world; and, withal, he
was not absolutely simple, which would have been excess;
he was only relatively simple, which was quite enough
for the Baroness.