really hold such views of life as I have heard to-night from some
of your guests. [An awkward pause.]

LADY HUNSTANTON. I hear you have such pleasant society in America.
Quite like our own in places, my son wrote to me.

HESTER. There are cliques in America as elsewhere, Lady
Hunstanton. But true American society consists simply of all the
good women and good men we have in our country.

LADY HUNSTANTON. What a sensible system, and I dare say quite
pleasant too. I am afraid in England we have too many artificial
social barriers. We don't see as much as we should of the middle
and lower classes.

HESTER. In America we have no lower classes.

LADY HUNSTANTON. Really? What a very strange arrangement!

MRS. ALLONBY. What is that dreadful girl talking about?

LADY STUTFIELD. She is painfully natural, is she not?

LADY CAROLINE. There are a great many things you haven't got in
America, I am told, Miss Worsley. They say you have no ruins, and
no curiosities.

MRS. ALLONBY. [To LADY STUTFIELD.] What nonsense! They have
their mothers and their manners.