Upon the whole the planters’ wives decided to call upon the countess, once at least, to satisfy their curiosity.  Afterwards they could visit or drop her as might seem expedient.

Thus, as soon as the roads became passable, scarcely a day went by in which a large, lumbering family coach, driven by a negro coachman and attended by a negro groom on horseback, did not arrive at Brudenell.

To one and all of these callers the same answer was returned: 

“The Countess of Hurstmonceux is engaged, and cannot receive visitors.”

The tables were turned.  The country ladies, who had been debating with themselves whether to “take up” or “drop” this very questionable stranger, received their congee from the countess herself from the threshold of her own door.  The planters’ wives were stunned!  Each was a native queen, in her own little domain, over her own black subjects, and to meet with a repulse from a foreign countess was an incomprehensible thing!

The reverence for titled foreigners, for which we republicans have been justly laughed at, is confined exclusively to those large cities corrupted by European intercourse.  It does not exist in the interior of the country.  For instance, in Maryland and Virginia the owner of a large plantation had a domain greater in territorial extent, and a power over his subjects more absolute, than that of any reigning grand-duke or sovereign prince in Germany or Italy.  The planter was an absolute monarch, his wife was his queen-consort; they saw no equals and knew no contradiction in their own realm.  Their neighbors were as powerful as themselves.  When they met, they met as peers on equal terms, the only precedence being that given by courtesy.  How, then, could the planter’s wife appreciate the dignity of a countess, who, on state occasions, must walk behind a marchioness, who must walk behind a duchess, who must walk behind a queen?  Thus you see how it was that the sovereign ladies of Maryland thought they were doing a very condescending thing in calling upon the young stranger whose husband had deserted her, and whose mother and sisters-in-law had left her alone; and that her ladyship had committed a great act of ill-breeding and impertinence in declining their visits.

At the close of the Washington season Mrs. Brudenell and her daughters returned to the Hall.  She told her friends that her son was traveling in Europe; but she told her daughter-in-law that she only hoped he was doing so; that she really had not heard a word from him, and did not know anything whatever of his whereabouts.

Mrs. Brudenell and her daughters received and paid visits; gave and attended parties, and made the house and the neighborhood very gay in the pleasant summer time.

Berenice did not enter into any of these amusements.  She never accepted an invitation to go out.  And even when company was entertained at the house she kept her own suite of rooms and had her meals brought to her there.  Mrs. Brudenell was excessively displeased at a course of conduct in her daughter-in-law that would naturally give rise to a great deal of conjecture.  She expostulated with Lady Hurstmonceux; but to no good purpose:  for Berenice shrunk from company, replying to all arguments that could be urged upon her: