Alice Duer Miller

“ A few children were on their way to school; the boys—dangerous projectiles—flying along on roller skates; the girls leading long-haired white terriers that looked up at Jacqueline out of shrewd bright eyes and pranced a little, like small hobbyhorses, as an indication that the weather had gone even to their dignified Scotch heads. A few young men strode by with pipes in their mouths and soft hats well down on their heads, trying to perpetuate as clerks the traditions of their so recent college days. ”

“ In the first place they were not her parents, for Mrs. McMannis was her stepmother; in the second place, she noticed, and loathed, a certain note of tremulous excitement in her governess' voice, as if a duke were something of supreme importance; and third, she was bruised in an old wound at not having been told directly. She never was told. The butler, the chauffeur, Mr. Williams, her father's secretary, always knew the family plans before she did. ”

“ James's Street had ever made, But she didn't look down; she looked up and saw a long narrow face, not at ail handsome, but delicately modeled—a job which it had taken several centuries to accomplish—a pale clear skin, a penetrating blue eye—enough to assure her that this was Thomas Aubrey Cecil Edward, and not Patrick Albert Edward Shawmus. Oh, no!
Her father laughed.
“Not on your tintype!” That's old stuff, Dormier. You can do better than that.”
“I learned it last night in the smoking room,” said the duke gently, “from a lad who called me Say-Duke, as if it were my name.” ”

“ Jacqueline hardly heard her, She was thinking:
“Must he always wireless the office? Does he think I'm not old enough to read? Does he forget I exist, or is it that woman who won't let him admit that I am more interested in his return than anyone else?”
She thought about not going to the pier to meet them. And when he asked her at the house, as she kissed him coldly, “Why were you not at the pier, Jacqueline?” she would answer with dignity, “I had no knowledge that you were coming, father.” “What? Did not Williams let you know?” “Why did not you yourself let me know?” ”

“ Standing beside her parents was an enormously tall man with a red face, a mustache and prominent blue eyes—a man more than twenty-eight and yet obviously less than seventy-five, unless there was some truth in the story of the vigorous preservation of elderly Englishmen. If that were the duke romance was dead.
A very young man in a high hat and cutaway rushed up to Mr. Williams and announced himself as a representative from the embassy to meet the duke. Jacqueline began to look sullen.
“Why must a duke be met?” she said.
“Of course he must be met,” said Miss Salisbury. ”

“ But even here Miss Salisbury did net yield, She regarded the Revolution as having been not won but conceded by a generous government, She seemed never to have heard of the War of 1812, and made it clear that she rather doubted its existence, while she remembered a great deal more about the magnificent friendliness of John Bright and the cotton spinners than she did of the insolence of Palmerston. ”

“ Lucy thought the party itself would be fun, but Jacqueline corrected her:
“Don't suppose, you poor innocent, that I shall be allowed down, to contaminate the festivities with my presence. Oh, no! I've known her to send up for Salisbury in a tight place, but never for me.”
Mrs. McMannis was putting into the arrangement of that dinner an executive genius which, if she had been a man, would have gone to the building of an empire or a business corporation. ”

“ She could have understood an interest in the English aristocracy from this romantic, historical point of view. But her parents' interest was not like that, nor was Miss Salisbury's. So the girl had not taken the slightest notice of her governess' announcement, but had gone on reading about the dangerous condition of the dome of St. Paul's—a subject, it must be owned, in which she took no interest at all; and when Miss Salisbury exclaimed “Won't it be delightful?” Jacqueline looked up and said, “Won't what be delightful?”
“To watch the duke over here—to see what he thinks of it all.” ”

“ Miss Salisbury began, but was interrupted.
“You can't,” shouted Jacqueline, “because it's true. My father is known all the world over for his ability; but if you took oer, this boy's title, what would he be? Nothing at all—no one! That's what your aristocracy is—a title and nothing else. And I won't be tied to his chariot wheels like Cleopatra! I won't come down to this dinner party!”
But, of course, she knew she would come down; more ignominious still, she knew she wanted to.
Quite independent of the duke, she had never been to a real party and she wanted to wear that white dress. ”

“ Jacqueline actually read more of a poet sometimes than the prescribed amount. She was allowed to go on:
“I heard a discussion the other day—awfully interesting. But is it true that no poet has ever been a good man?”
For a hasty composition, this was not bad—a teacher of English verse really was obliged to take note of this.
“I should rather say,” replied Miss Grigsby, smiling with a false sweetness which she herself was the last person to know was false, “that no great poet had ever been anything but a good man. Milton——”
“——was horrid to his daughters, Miss Grigsby.” ”

“ If she had been a maid they could not have more completely ignored her. The duke must think she was half-witted.
Mrs. McMannis and Pitts-Cave and the duke and the young man from the embassy al! disappeared into one of the McMannis motors, and Mr. McMannis and his daughter and Miss Salisbury got into the other—the older car, driven by the second chauffeur.
“How handsome His Grace is!” exclaimed Miss Salisbury, and her voice shook with emotion.
“He's a nice young fellow,” said Mr. McMannis. “But I shouldn't call him handsome. Would you, Jacqueline?” ”

“ The English climate is the only one. In England it is possible to be out-of-doors all the year round.” And Miss Salisbury sighed, recalling the equable moisture cf her native island.
“If you don't mind being soaked to the skin,” answered Jacqueline, a little hampered in her attack by the fact that she had never been in England and knew its climate only from hearsay.
“Better,” replied her governess, “than being alternately parched and frozen as in America.” ”

“ We understand that the enormous new Italian palace in the East Eighties—so strangely out of harmony with the background of the McMannises—is to be opened for a series of entertainments in the hope that many people will go there to meet a duke who have been obdurate heretofore.”
To be wroth with those we love is, as the poet has said, maddening; but to be ashamed of them is almost worse. ”

“ Unlike Josephine, she had the tact to die before McMannis' growing greatness rendered her a detriment instead of an advantage. His wild grief at her loss was a new element in his success. Hard work and speculation became his only distractions. By a combination of these he made his fortune, principally in copper stocks. He had been eight years a widower and Jacqueline was a child of nine, when, in the city of Mobile, he fell under the domination of his present wife. ”

“ They passed the bust of Richard Hunt, late architect of the late Lenox Library. On that great pile of granite it was optimistically supposed that the sightless eyes of the bust would gaze as long as New York stood; but now, by one of those rapid changes so characteristic of Manhattan, those eyes are fixed upon a long low private house, the creation of quite a different architect. ”

“ Then, glancing a little farther along the ship's rail, she saw her stepmother, and her heart hardened again.
“New sables, if I'm not mistaken,” she observed to Miss Salisbury.
“And very nice too,” said Miss Salisbury; and then, fearing that this might be interpreted as an envy of American luxury, she added, “That is, if one can wear fur. I find wool keeps one warmer.” ”

“ The McMannises, having failed to conspicuously to make good their social ambitions in these United States, have met, so we are told, with great success in England, where so little is expected of Americans except quaint speech and an ability to pay the bills. ”

“ She read on:
“'Patrick Albert Edward Shawmus Fitzgrady-Stewart, fourth duke and thirteenth baron, born July 2, 1850——'”
“That's 'nuff!” cried Lucy. “The man is seventy-five years old. Let's go and do our Latin prose.”
“I don't care if he's a thousand,” answered Jacqueline. “Just listen to the things he is, Lucy: 'Educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, lord lieutenant of the county and president of its Territorial Forces Association. J. P.' Do you happen to know what a J. P. is?” ”

“ Coney House, near Crumbelly, Hants, The ge, Bonny Brigg, Midlothian. Town residence: Dormier House, Grosvenor Square.' As a special favor, Lucy, I'll omit his clubs, which are simply thrilling, and pass to: 'Son, living: Thomas Aubrey Cecil Edward, Lord Fitzgrady, born May 25, 1897; educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge; was captain of Grenadier Guards and served throughout European war; wounded three times——'”
Lucy, who had been counting on her fingers, now interrupted.
“That sounds more like it,” she said. “He's young.”
Jacqueline demurred a little. ”