Willis Emerson - Buell Hampton

“My dear Mrs. Horton,” replied her friend, “trust me to guard off this Mr. Stanton. I have already assured him that Miss Ethel is spoken for, and I feel sure that he is too honorable to intrude himself when he regards Ethel as already engaged.”

“But she is not engaged yet – that is the trouble,” exclaimed Mrs. Horton, who at heart was really an estimable woman, although worldly and ambitious to gain a foothold in English aristocracy. Perhaps if she had never met Mrs. Osborn, Ethel might not have been sent to London. In her intercourse with English acquaintances, however, Mrs. Horton herself had become a devotee of the nobility.

“How delightfully innocent you are,” laughed Mrs. Osborn. “Why, my dear Mrs. Horton, of course she is not engaged, but that does not prevent our saying she is, when it will protect the girl.”

“Perhaps you are right,” replied Mrs. Horton, with a sigh, “but I do dislike duplicity, and really, Lucy, I feel worried about that letter. I fear we are hardly doing right, and yet it seems to me that one is forced to questionable measures in a case like this. Why Ethel can’t see the advantage to be derived from a marriage into such an old family as the Avondales is quite past my comprehension.”

“It takes time to cultivate the taste,” replied Mrs. Osborn. “Americans, as a rule, are naturally very stupid, and we American women are especially headstrong; but we, my dear Mrs. Horton, have mixed with the purple, and our eyes have been opened. I doubt not,” she continued, “that either Doctor Redfield or Mr. Stanton would be quite eligible, but then they would develop into men of affairs and, like your husband and mine, would be wedded to their money-making schemes rather than to their wives.”

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