Page:Terminations (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1895).djvu/94

82. One might doubtless have overdone the idea that there was a general exemption for such a man; but, if this had happened, it would have been through one's feeling that there could be none for such a woman.

I recognized her superiority when I asked her about the aunt of the disappointed young lady; it sounded like a sentence from a phrase-book. She triumphed in what she told me, and she may have triumphed still more in what she withheld. My friend of the other evening, Miss Anvoy, had but lately come to England; Lady Coxon, the aunt, had been established here for years in consequence of her marriage with the late Sir Gregory of that ilk. She had a house in the Regent's Park, a bath-chair, and a fernery; and above all she had sympathy. Mrs. Saltram had made her acquaintance through mutual friends. This vagueness caused me to feel how much I was out of it, and how large an independent circle Mrs. Saltram had at her command. I should have been glad to know more about the disappointed young lady, but I felt that I should know most by not depriving her of her advantage, as she might have mysterious means of depriving me of my knowledge. For the present, moreover, this experience was arrested, Lady Coxon having in fact gone abroad, accompanied by her niece. The niece, besides being immensely clever, was an heiress, Mrs. Saltram said; the only daughter and the light of the eyes of some great American merchant, a man,