“Ladies, in England, do not go to music-halls,” said Arnold.

“Gentlemen do.  Why not ladies, then?  Answer me that.  Why can’t ladies go, when gentlemen go?  What is proper for gentlemen is proper for ladies.  Very well, then, I want to go somewhere every night.  I want to see everything there is to see, and to hear all that there is to hear.”

“We shall go, presently, a good deal into society,” said Clara timidly.  “Society will come back to town very soon now—­at least, some of it.”

“Oh, yes, I dare say.  Society!  No, thank you, with company manners.  I want to laugh, and talk, and enjoy myself.”

The champagne, in fact, had made her forget the instructions of her tutor.  At all events, she looked anything but “quiet,” with her face flushed and her eyes bright.  Suddenly she caught Arnold’s expression of suspicion and watchfulness, and resolutely subdued a rising inclination to get up from the table and have a walk round with a snatch of a Topical Song.

“Forgive me, Clara,” she murmured in her sweetest tone, “forgive me, cousin.  I feel as if I must break out a bit, now and then.  Yankee manners, you know.  Let me stay quiet with you for a while.  You know the thought of starched and stiff London society quite frightens me.  I am not used to anything stiff.  Let me stay at home quiet, with you.”

“Dear girl!” cried Clara, her eyes filling with tears; “she has all Claude’s affectionate softness of heart.”

“I believe,” said Arnold, later on in the evening, “that she must have been a circus rider, or something of that sort.  What on earth does Clara mean by the gentle blood breaking out?  We nearly had a breaking out at dinner, but it certainly was not due to the gentle blood.”

After dinner, Arnold found her sitting on a sofa with Clara, who was telling her something about the glories of the Deseret family.  He was half inclined to pity the girl, or to laugh—­he was not certain which—­for the patience with which she listened, in order to make amends for any bad impression she might have produced at dinner.  He asked her, presently, if she would play.  She might be, and certainly was, vulgar; but she could play well and she knew good music.  People generally think that good music softens manners, and does not permit those who play and practice it to be vulgar.  But, concerning this young person, so much could not be said with any truth.

“You play very well.  Where did you learn?  Who was your master?” Arnold asked.

She began to reply, but stopped short.  He had very nearly caught her.

“Don’t ask questions,” she said.  “I told you not to ask questions before.  Where should I learn, but in America?  Do you suppose no one can play the piano, except in England?  Look here,” she glanced at her cousin.  “Do you, Mr. Arbuthnot, always spend your evenings like this?”

“How like this?”

“Why, going around in a swallow tail to drawing-rooms with the women, like a tame tom-cat.  If you do, you must be a truly good young man.  If you don’t, what do you do?”