She had taken off her hat and was leaning back against the oak under which she sat, watching with parted lips and a gaze of the purest delight and wonder the movements of a nut-hatch overhead, a creature of the woodpecker kind, with delicate purple gray plumage, who was tapping the branch above her for insects with his large disproportionate bill, and then skimming along to a sand-bank a little distance off, where he disappeared with his prey into his nest.
'"Ha!" said Wallace, who is a bird-lover, "a truce to Balzac, and let us watch those nut-hatches! Miss Bretherton's quite right to prefer them to French novels." '"French novels!" she said, withdrawing her eyes from the branch above her, and frowning a little at Wallace as she spoke.

"Please don't expect me to talk about them--I know nothing about them--I have never wished to." 'Her voice had a tone almost of hauteur in it.

I have noticed it before.
It is the tone of the famous actress accustomed to believe in herself and her own opinion.

I connected it, too, with all one hears of her determination to look upon herself as charged with a mission for the reform of stage morals.

French novels and French actresses! apparently she regards them all as so many unknown horrors, standing in the way of the purification of dramatic art by a beautiful young person with a high standard of duty.