"Fancy a Van Zandt—one of the Van Zandts, of Boston—bringing home an A B C school-girl as a bride!" was the disdainful answer she received.
Vivacious Edith cried out tartly:
"You need not take on such airs, Sylvie. You are not so learned yourself. New York girls never know anything but dressing and flirting."
"We marry into poor, learned families, and so adjust the difference," Mrs. Van Zandt replied, sarcastically.
Both the sisters flushed hotly at this coarse rejoinder.
Mrs. Van Zandt had been generous with her money, flinging it about her with the lavish hand of a spoiled darling of Fortune; but she was always conscious of its importance, never more so than when twitted with her execrable French, her questionable time in music, and her outrageous flirting, that sometimes drove poor Bryant wild with jealousy.
And so to this household, with its discordant elements, its supercilious mistress, its dreamy student, Maud, its enthusiastic, artistic Edith, came Una with her impassioned soul, her shy sensitiveness, her innocence and ignorance, and her heritage of beauty, yet branded already "pauper and nobody."
When she saw all those fair young faces grouped in the handsome drawing-room to meet her, her heart thrilled with timid delight. She had had so little to do all her life with the young and gay.
All at once, as it were, she was thrown into a house full of young and handsome people, and it was most pleasant. With pretty confidence, quite untouched with self-assertion, she received their greetings, kind on the part of the girls, patronizing on that of Mrs. Van Zandt, and reserved as regarded Bryant.