“Have you come back to tell us that we talk through our noses?” he asked.

“I don’t like being called an Anglomaniac,” I replied, dropping my ring from one finger to another.  Fortunately I was sitting in a rocking chair—­the only one I had not been able to persuade momma to have taken out of the drawing-room.  The rock was a considerable relief to my nerves.

“I knew that the cockneys on the other side were fond of inventing fictions about what they are pleased to call the ‘American accent,’” continued Mr. Page, with a scorn which I felt in the very heels of my shoes, “but I confess I thought you too patriotic to be taken in by them.”

“Taken in by them” was hard to bear, but I thought if I said nothing at this point we might still have a peaceful evening.  So I kept silence.

“Of course, I speak as a mere product of the American Constitution—­a common unit of the democracy,” he went on, his sentences gathering wrath as he rolled them out, “but if there were such a thing as an American accent, I think I’ve lived long enough, and patrolled this little Union of ours extensively enough, to hear it by this time.  But it appears to be necessary to reside four months in England, mixing freely with earls and countesses, to detect it.”

“Perhaps it is,” I said, and I may have smiled.

“I should hate to pay the price.”

Mr. Page’s tone distinctly expressed that the society of earls and countesses would be, to him, contaminating.

Again I made no reply.  I wanted the American accent to drop out of the conversation, if possible, but Fate had willed it otherwise.

“I sai, y’know, awfly hard luck, you’re havin’ to settle down amongst these barbarians again, bai Jove!”

I am not quite sure that it’s a proper term for use in a book, but by this time I was mad.  There was criticism in my voice, and a distinct chill as I said composedly, “You don’t do it very well.”

I did not look at him, I looked at the lamp, but there was that in the air which convinced me that we had arrived at a crisis.

“I suppose not.  I’m not a marquis, nor the end man at a minstrel show.  I’m only an American, like sixty million other Americans, and the language of Abraham Lincoln is good enough for me.  But I suppose I, like the other sixty million, emit it through my nose!”

“I should be sorry to contradict you,” I said.

Arthur folded his arms and gathered himself up until he appeared to taper from his stem like a florist’s bouquet, and all the upper part of him was pink and trembling with emotion.  Arthur may one day attain corpulence; he is already well rounded.

“I need hardly say,” he said majestically, “that when I did myself the honour of proposing, I was under the impression that I had a suitable larynx to offer you.”

“You see I didn’t know,” I murmured, and by accident I dropped my engagement ring, which rolled upon the carpet at his feet.  He stooped and picked it up.