In giving her this name it is not meant that
there are no other ladies at our table, or that the handmaids who serve
us are not ladies, or to deny the general proposition that everybody who
wears the unbifurcated garment is entitled to that appellation. Only
this lady has a look and manner which there is no mistaking as belonging
to a person always accustomed to refined and elegant society. Her style
is perhaps a little more courtly and gracious than some would like. The
language and manner which betray the habitual desire of pleasing, and
which add a charm to intercourse in the higher social circles, are liable
to be construed by sensitive beings unused to such amenities as an odious
condescension when addressed to persons of less consideration than the
accused, and as a still more odious--you know the word--when directed to
those who are esteemed by the world as considerable person ages. But of
all this the accused are fortunately wholly unconscious, for there is
nothing so entirely natural and unaffected as the highest breeding.
From an aspect of dignified but undisguised economy which showed itself
in her dress as well as in her limited quarters, I suspected a story of
shipwrecked fortune, and determined to question our Landlady. That
worthy woman was delighted to tell the history of her most distinguished
boarder.
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