gathered. There were things it was so inelegant to say that only
the most impossible persons said them; there were things it was so
inexcusable to do that when done their inexcusability assumed the
proportions of a crime. There were movements, expressions, points of
view, which one must avoid as one would avoid the plague. And they were
all things, acts, expressions, attitudes of mind which Bettina had
been familiar with from her infancy, and which she was well aware were
considered almost entirely harmless and unobjectionable in New York,
in her beloved New York, which was the centre of the world, which was
bigger, richer, gayer, more admirable than any other city known upon the
earth.

If she had not so loved it, if she had ever dreamed of the existence of
any other place as being absolutely necessary, she would not have felt
the thing so bitterly. But it seemed to her that all these amiable
diatribes in exquisite French were directed at her New York, and it
must be admitted that she was humiliated and enraged. It was a personal,
indeed, a family matter. Her father, her mother, her relatives, and
friends were all in some degree exactly the kind of persons whose
speech, habits, and opinions she must conscientiously avoid. But for
the instinct of summing up values, circumstances, and intentions, it is
probable that she would have lost her head, let loose her temper and her
tongue, and have become insubordinate. But the quickness of perception
which had revealed practical potentialities to old Reuben Vanderpoel,
revealed to her the value of French which was perfectly fluent, a voice
which was musical, movements which were grace, manners which had a
still beauty, and comparing these things with others less charming
she listened and restrained herself, learning, marking, and inwardly
digesting with a cleverness most enviable.