The wiser and more fortunate of these travellers and students of life
brought letters to Mr. and Mrs. Hambleton Durrett. That household was
symptomatic--if they liked--of the new order of things; and it was rare
indeed when both members of it were at home to entertain them. If Mr.
Durrett were in the city, and they did not happen to be Britons with
sporting proclivities, they simply were not entertained: when Mrs.
Durrett received them dinners were given in their honour on the Durrett
gold plate, and they spent cosey and delightful hours conversing with her
in the little salon overlooking the garden, to return to their hotels and
jot down paragraphs on the superiority of the American women over the
men. These particular foreigners did not lay eyes on Mr. Durrett, who was
in Florida or in the East playing polo or engaged in some other pursuit.
One result of the lavishness and luxury that amazed them they wrote--had
been to raise the standard of culture of the women, who were our leisure
class. But the travellers did not remain long enough to arrive at any
conclusions of value on the effect of luxury and lavishness on the sacred
institution of marriage.

If Mr. Nathaniel Durrett could have returned to his native city after
fifteen years or so in the grave, not the least of the phenomena to
startle him would have been that which was taking place in his own house.
For he would have beheld serenely established in that former abode of
Calvinism one of the most reprehensible of exotic abominations, a
'mariage de convenance;' nor could he have failed to observe, moreover,
the complacency with which the descendants of his friends, the pew
holders in Dr. Pound's church, regarded the matter: and not only these,
but the city at large. The stronghold of Scotch Presbyterianism had
become a London or a Paris, a Gomorrah!

Mrs. Hambleton Durrett went her way, and Mr. Durrett his. The less said