mask was not so elegant. I have no doubt whatever that, as Mrs.
Winterbourne, she adapted herself to her new _milieu_ with absolute
success, and yet without loss of her own most fascinating
individuality.[8]

The whole atmosphere of the country tends to preserve the spirit of
unsuspecting innocence in the American maiden. The function of a
chaperon is very differently interpreted in the United States and in
England. On one occasion I met in a Pullman car a young lady
travelling in charge of her governess. A chance conversation elicited
the fact that she was the daughter of a well-known New York banker;
and the fact that we had some mutual acquaintances was accepted as
all-sufficing credentials for my respectability. We had happened to
fix on the same hotel at our destination; and in the evening, after
dinner, I met in the corridor the staid and severe-looking
_gouvernante_, who saluted me with "Oh, Mr. Muirhead, I have such a
headache! Would you mind going out with my little girl while she makes
some purchases?" I was a little taken aback at first; but a moment's
reflection convinced me that I had just experienced a most striking
tribute to the honour of the American man and the social atmosphere of
the United States.

The psychological method of suggestive criticism has, perhaps, never
been applied with more delicacy of intelligence than in M. Bourget's
chapter on the American woman. Each stroke of the pen, or rather each
turn of the scalpel, amazes us by its keen penetration. As we at last
close the book and meditate on what we have read, it is little by
little borne in upon us that though due tribute is paid to the
charming traits of the American woman, yet the general outcome of M.
Bourget's analysis is truly damnatory. If this sprightly, fascinating,