heaving trains, he had traversed a large part of the American continent. His wife inquired whether by chance he preferred the young persons they had (or at least she had) observed at Liverpool the night before their departure; to which he replied that they were no doubt sad creatures, but that the looks of a woman mattered only so long as one lived with her, and he did not live, and never should live, with the daughters of that grimy seaport. With the women in the American cars he had been living—oh, tremendously! and they were deucedly plain. There upon Lady Chasemore wished to know whether he did not think Mrs. Eugene had beauty, and Mrs. Ripley, and her sister Mrs. Redwood, and Mrs. Long, and several other ornaments of the society in which they had mingled during their stay in New York. 'Mrs. Eugene is Mrs. Eugene and Mrs. Redwood is Mrs. Redwood,' Sir Rufus retorted; 'but the women in the cars weren't either, and all the women I saw were like the women in the cars.'—'Well, there may be something in the cars,' said Lady Chasemore, pensively; and she mentioned that it was very odd that during her husband's absence, as she roamed about New York, she should have made precisely the opposite reflection and been struck with the number of pretty faces. 'Oh, pretty faces, pretty faces, I daresay!' But Sir Rufus had no time to develop this vague rejoinder.
When they came back from Washington to sail Agatha told her brother that he was going to write a book about America: it was for this he had made so many inquiries and taken so many notes. She had not known it before; it was only while they were in Washington that he told her he had made
