A voyage of discovery

A Novel of American Society
BY HAMILTON AÏDÉ
NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 1892
Copyright, 1892, by Harper & Brothers.
All rights reserved.
TO MY DEAR COMPANIONS ON A VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY I Dedicate these Pages
Why are you going to the United States? asked an American, no longer in his first youth, of a young Englishwoman, on board the Teutonic , the second day after they had left Liverpool.
The sky was blue; the sea was smooth; the hour was noon. The lady was stretched on a deck-chair; the American sat beside her. Both were fine types of their races; both had faces which arrested and held the attention. Mr. Quintin Ferrars was unusually tall for an American; his limbs were not loosely knit, and his walk was erect and firm—attributes more common to the dwellers in the prairie than to those on Fifth Avenue. He had a resolute, thoughtful face, over which gleams of satire were more apt to play than those of sympathy; with keen eyes, the expression, even the color, of which it was difficult to determine. Neither in his accent nor in his colloquialisms was there any touch of the peculiarity which we call American, but which our cousins affirm to be drawn through conduits of heredity from the undefiled well of English speech of their Puritan fathers. Mr. Ferrars was accused of being an Anglomaniac; it would be more true to say that he was keenly critical of the defects in his own country. But then he was critical of all things, human and divine.
The young Englishwoman, in her tight-fitting Ulster of russet tweed, with a stalking-cap of the same material, beneath which her abundant auburn hair was tightly rolled, was tall, and had a well-balanced figure, with a waist sufficiently large to support her breadth of shoulder and finely developed bust without suggesting a fear that it might snap in two. Her clear gray eyes, under dark, level brows, had a singular directness of outlook; the fine lines of her somewhat large mouth as much variety of expression, when speaking, as of strength and sweetness in repose. But the chief characteristic of her handsome face was the eager interest it displayed in anything, whether grave or gay, that moved her; the absence of self-consciousness in her intercourse with both men and women; and the bright smile, which was in itself an enchantment. She had great animation of manner, a frank and ringing laugh, and a ready tongue; all of which were probably calculated to mislead a stranger as to her real character.