"Raise your arm, my dear,—so! I believe it is a trifle tight—What were you saying?"
"Lieutenant Aylesworth,—isn't he adorable?"
"My dear," said the Marchioness, "it hasn't been your good fortune to come in contact with many of the real American men. You have seen the imitations. Therefore you are tremendously impressed with the real article when it is set before you. Aylesworth is a splendid fellow. He is big and clean and gentle. There isn't a rotten spot in him. But you must not think of him as an exception. There are a million men like him in this wonderful country,—ay, more than a million, my dear. Give me an American every time. If I couldn't get along with him and be happy to the end of my days with him, it would be my fault and not his. They know how to treat a woman, and that is more than you can say for our own countrymen as a class. All that a woman has to do to make an American husband happy is to let him think that he isn't doing quite enough for her. If I were twenty-five years younger than I am, I would get me an American husband and keep him on the jump from morning till night doing everything in his power to make himself perfectly happy over me. This Lieutenant Aylesworth is a fair example of what they turn out over here, my dear Jane. You will find his counterpart everywhere, and not always in the uniform of the U. S. Navy. They are a new breed of men, and they are full of the joy of living. They represent the revivified strength of a dozen run-down nations, our own Empire among them."
"He may be all you claim for him," said Jane, "but give me an English gentleman every time."
"That is because you happen to be very much in love with one, my dear,—and a rare one into the bargain. Eric Temple has lost nothing by being away from England for the past three years. He is as arrogant and as cocksure of himself as any other Englishmen, but he has picked up virtues that most of his countrymen disdain. Never fear, my dear,—he will be a good husband to you. But he will not eat out of your hand as these jolly Americans do. And when he is sixty he will be running true to form. He will be a lordly old dear and you will have to listen to his criticism of the government, and the navy and the army and all the rest of creation from morning till night and you will have to agree with him or he won't understand what the devil has got into you. But, as that is precisely what all English wives love better than anything else in the world, you will be happy."
"I don't believe Eric will ever become crotchety or overbearing," said Jane stubbornly.
"That would be a pity, dear," said the Marchioness, rising; "for of such is the kingdom of Britain."
Shortly after eleven o'clock, Julia came hurrying upstairs in great agitation. She tried vainly for awhile to attract the attention of the pompous Cricklewick by a series of sibilant whispers directed from behind the curtains in the foyer.
The huge room was crowded. Everybody was there, including Count Andrew Drouillard, who rarely attended the functions; the Princess Mariana di Pavesi, young Baron Osterholz (who had but recently returned to New York after a tour of the West as a chorus-man in "The Merry Widow"); and Prince Waldemar de Bosky, excused for the night from Spangler's on account of a severe attack of ptomaine poisoning.