Lady Betty Across the Water

								

acted when they came to say "How do you do?" to her. She screwed up her
eyes till they looked hard and sharp enough to go through you like a
thin knife--(or more like a long, slender hatpin jabbing your head),
and having waited an instant before returning their greeting, slowly
answered; "Very well, thank you. Yes, I am going home rather early.
I'm due at Newport as soon as possible"; then fingered her open book
(which she hadn't peeped into before) and made a little, just
noticeable gesture with her lorgnette.
Then the poor people were too much crushed to stop and try to talk to
Miss Woodburn, though she always looked at them sweetly, as if she
would make up for her cousin being a dragon if she could.
By and by, somebody else would sail up, perhaps not half as nice to
look at as the one who had gone. But lo, Mrs. Stuyvesant-Knox would be
suddenly transformed. She would smile, and hold out her hand. To their
"How do you do?" she would respond "How do you do?" and though I don't
think she's really much interested in anyone but herself, she would ask
where they had been, what they had been doing, and how it happened they
were going back so soon. The next thing, she would say to me: "Betty,
dear, I should like you and Mrs. or Mr. So-and-So to know each other,
as I hope you'll meet again, while you're staying with me. Lady Betty
Bulkeley, etc., etc. I wonder if you have ever met her brother, the
Duke of Stanforth, and her cousin, the Marquis of Loveland, over in
London?"
Loveland would have had a fit if he could have heard her, for, of
course, at home only the lower middle classes and such people hurl a
Marquis's title at his head in that fashion; but I suppose foreigners,
unless they've been in England a long time, don't know the difference.
When I got a chance, I asked Sally Woodburn how Mrs. Stuyvesant-Knox
made her distinctions in snubbing some people and preening herself to
others.
"My deah," said Sally (I'm to call her "Sally" now; it's been
understood between us for some time), "my deah, you're a poor, innocent
child, and I reckon you've been brought up in darkness, without even so
much as hearing of the Four Hundred."
"What are the Four Hundred? Are they a kind of Light Brigade, like the
Six Hundred?" I asked. "Or is it a sort of governing body like--like
the Council of Three?"
She laughed so much at this, with her charming, velvety laugh, that I
grew quite nervous, for it's embarrassing to have said something funny
when you've meant to be rather intelligent. But soon she took pity on
me. "You perfect love," she said; "that's really too sweet. It deserves
to be put into Life, or something. And yet you're not so far wrong,
when one comes to think of it. The Four Hundred is a kind of
governing body; only I believe it's really reduced to Two Hundred now.
They govern New York; and Newport; and Lennox; and Bar Harbour; and
several other places which are considered very nice and important."