Lizzie had not at all the look of a young lady who dusted things; she wore such pretty dresses and had such delicate fingers that it was difficult to imagine her immersed in sordid cares.

She came to meet Madame M; auunster on her arrival, but she said nothing, or almost nothing, and the Baroness again reflected--she had had occasion to do so before--that American girls had no manners.

She disliked this little American girl, and she was quite prepared to learn that she had failed to commend herself to Miss Acton.

Lizzie struck her as positive and explicit almost to pertness; and the idea of her combining the apparent incongruities of a taste for housework and the wearing of fresh, Parisian-looking dresses suggested the possession of a dangerous energy.
It was a source of irritation to the Baroness that in this country it should seem to matter whether a little girl were a trifle less or a trifle more of a nonentity; for Eugenia had hitherto been conscious of no moral pressure as regards the appreciation of diminutive virgins.
It was perhaps an indication of Lizzie's pertness that she very soon retired and left the Baroness on her brother's hands.

Acton talked a great deal about his chinoiseries; he knew a good deal about porcelain and bric-a-brac.