"That is exactly the word for it."
"Is she contemptuous of those who do not dress exquisitely? Or merely tolerant?"
Burton felt rather uncomfortable under these probing questions, but he understood something of the girl's mood, and he could not resent the trace of defiance that he caught under rather than in her words. He therefore answered gently:
"I think that if she likes a person, she likes him whole-heartedly, and without regard to the accidental attributes. She will like you. She will love you."
"What makes you think so?" she asked, with her searching eyes steadily upon him.
"Why,--because Philip does, for one thing."
"But if it were not for that,--am I the sort of girl that she would be apt to like?"
"What sort of a girl are you?" he asked, with a smile. He knew that her last question held dangerous depths into which he did not care to look at that instant. Rachel was so--well, narrow in her social sympathies!
"Never mind that," said the girl, and he wondered uneasily whether she thought her last question had been sufficiently answered. "Tell me something about their place,--Oversite. That is the name of their estate at Putney?"
"Yes, and it is quite as important a place as the town that honors itself by existing alongside the estate. It goes back to the colonial days. The Overmans were Tories during the Revolution, but they managed somehow to hold or to recover their estate, and though the family has consented to live under a republic, it has always been conscious of the graciousness of its attitude. Of course Rachel--Mrs. Overman--is an Overman by marriage only. She comes from a Southern family, herself, and she has the Southern woman's beautiful voice and sweet graciousness. And Philip you know. There is nothing priggish about him."