that he might ornament those which were already his. Those little spread
eagles, the corpuscles in his blood, folded their wings a trifle as he
grew older, and weren't always so ready to scream and boast; but they
remained eagles, and no amount of Eton and Oxford could turn them into
little unicorns or lions. You may wonder why Fitz's father, a strong,
sane man, permitted such attempts at denationalization upon his son and
heir. Fitz so wondered--once. So wrote. And was answered thus:

... If you're any good it will all come out in the wash. If you aren't
any good it doesn't matter whether your mother makes an Englishman out
of you or a Mandarin. When you come of age you'll be your own man;
that's been the bargain between your mother and me. That will be the
time for you to decide whether to be governed or to help govern. I am
not afraid for you. I never have been.

So Mrs. Williams was not successful on the whole in her attempts to make
a cosmopolitan of Fitz. And that was just enough, because the attempts
were those of an amateur. She had lived a furiously active life of
pleasure; she had made an unassailable place for herself in the best
European society, as at home. She had not even become estranged from her
husband. They were always crossing the ocean to see each other, "if only
for a minute or two," as she used to say, and when Fitz was at school
she spent much of her time in America; and Fitz's short vacations were
wild sprees with his father and mother, come over for the purpose. Mr.
Williams would take an immense country house for a few weeks, with
shooting and riding and all sorts of games thrown in, and have Fitz's
friends by the dozen. But, like as not, Mr. Williams would leave in the
middle of it, as fast as trains and steamers could carry him, home to
his affairs. And even the little English boys missed him sorely, since
he was much kinder to them, as a rule, than their own fathers were, and