"I am not at all sure of that," she answered, putting her white forefinger between the pages of her book, and turning squarely round to look at him as he talked. "Perhaps if I can not bring myself to like England, I may persuade my aunt to come to America with me."
"Lady Lancaster would die of chagrin if you did," he replied, hastily.
He saw a blush color the smooth cheek, and wished that he had thought before he spoke.
"She is poor and proud. She does not like to be reminded that her aunt is a servant at Lancaster Park," he said, pityingly, to himself.
And he recalled De Vere's intentions with a sensation of generous pleasure. Leonora, with her fair face and her cultured mind, would be lifted by her marriage into the sphere where she rightly belonged. Then she would like England better.
"I have been reading your poet laureate," she said. "I was much struck by these lines:
'Howe'er it be, it seems to me,
'Tis only noble to be good:
Kind hearts are more than coronets,
And simple faith than Norman blood.'
I should not have thought an English poet would write that," she went on. "I thought England was too entirely governed by the laws of caste for one of her people to give free utterance to such a dangerous sentiment."
"You must not judge us too hardly," he said, hastily.