Page:The Author of Beltraffio, Pandora, Georgina's Reasons, The Path of Duty, Four Meetings (Boston, James R. Osgood & Co., 1885).djvu/109

Rh dusk, as she trod the deck that vaguely swayed, he thought there was something in her air and port that carried out such a spirit.

"What is her social position?" he inquired of Mrs. Dangerfield the next day. "I can't make it out at all, it is so contradictory. She strikes me as having much cultivation and much spirit. Her appearance, too, is very nice. Yet her parents are little burghers. That is easily seen."

"Oh, social position," Mrs. Dangerfield exclaimed, nodding two or three times rather portentously. "What big expressions you use! Do you think every body in the world has a social position? That is reserved for an infinitely small majority of mankind. You can't have a social position at Utica, any more than you can have an opera-box. Pandora has n't got any; where should she have got it? Poor girl, it is n't fair of you to ask such questions as that."

"Well," said Vogelstein, "if she is of the lower class, it seems to me very—very—" and he paused a moment, as he often paused in speaking English, looking for his word.

"Very what, Count Vogelstein?"

"Very significant, very representative."

"Oh, dear, she isn't of the lower class," Mrs. Dangerfield murmured, helplessly.

"What is she, then?"

"Well, I'm bound to admit that since I was at home last she is a novelty. A girl like that, with such people, it's a new type."