But here Lord Algernon came up to implore her to sing them one of “those plantation songs;” and Miss Desborough, with scarcely a change of voice or manner, allowed herself to be led to the piano.  The consul had little chance to speak with her again, but he saw enough that evening to convince him not only that Lord Algernon was very much in love with her, but that the fact had been equally and complacently accepted by the family and guests.  That her present visit was only an opportunity for a formal engagement was clear to every woman in the house—­not excepting, I fear, even the fair subject of gossip herself.  Yet she seemed so unconcerned and self-contained that the consul wondered if she really cared for Lord Algernon.  And having thus wondered, he came to the conclusion that it didn’t much matter, for the happiness of so practically organized a young lady, if she loved him or not.

It is highly probable that Miss Sadie Desborough had not even gone so far as to ask herself that question.  She awoke the next morning with a sense of easy victory and calm satisfaction that had, however, none of the transports of affection.  Her taste was satisfied by the love of a handsome young fellow,—­a typical Englishman,—­who, if not exactly original or ideal, was, she felt, of an universally accepted, “hall-marked” standard, the legitimate outcome of a highly ordered, carefully guarded civilization, whose repose was the absence of struggle or ambition; a man whose regular features were not yet differentiated from the rest of his class by any of those disturbing lines which people call character.  Everything was made ready for her, without care or preparation; she had not even an ideal to realize or to modify.  She could slip without any jar or dislocation into this life which was just saved from self-indulgence and sybaritic luxury by certain conventional rules of activity and the occupation of amusement which, as obligations of her position, even appeared to suggest the novel aspect of a duty!  She could accept all this without the sense of being an intruder in an unbroken lineage—­thanks to the consul’s account of the Beverdales’ inheritance.  She already pictured herself as the mistress of this fair domain, the custodian of its treasures and traditions, and the dispenser of its hospitalities, but—­as she conscientiously believed—­without pride or vanity, in her position; only an intense and thoughtful appreciation of it.  Nor did she dream of ever displaying it ostentatiously before her less fortunate fellow countrywomen; on the contrary, she looked forward to their possible criticism of her casting off all transatlantic ties with an uneasy consciousness that was perhaps her nearest approach to patriotism.  Yet, again, she reasoned that, as her father was an Englishman, she was only returning to her old home.  As to her mother, she had already comforted herself by noticing certain discrepancies in that lady’s temperament, which led her to believe that she herself alone inherited her father’s nature—­for her mother was, of course, distinctly American!  So little conscious was she of any possible snobbishness in this belief, that in her superb naivete she would have argued the point with the consul, and employed a wit and dialect that were purely American.