Upon the whole the planters' wives decided to call upon the countess,

once at least, to satisfy their curiosity. Afterwards they could visit

or drop her as might seem expedient.

Thus, as soon as the roads became passable, scarcely a day went by in

which a large, lumbering family coach, driven by a negro coachman and

attended by a negro groom on horseback, did not arrive at Brudenell.

To one and all of these callers the same answer was returned: "The Countess of Hurstmonceux is engaged, and cannot receive visitors."

The tables were turned. The country ladies, who had been debating with

themselves whether to "take up" or "drop" this very questionable

stranger, received their congée from the countess herself from the

threshold of her own door. The planters' wives were stunned! Each was a

native queen, in her own little domain, over her own black subjects, and

to meet with a repulse from a foreign countess was an incomprehensible

thing!

The reverence for titled foreigners, for which we republicans have been

justly laughed at, is confined exclusively to those large cities

corrupted by European intercourse. It does not exist in the interior of

the country. For instance, in Maryland and Virginia the owner of a large

plantation had a domain greater in territorial extent, and a power over

his subjects more absolute, than that of any reigning grand-duke or

sovereign prince in Germany or Italy. The planter was an absolute

monarch, his wife was his queen-consort; they saw no equals and knew no

contradiction in their own realm. Their neighbors were as powerful as

themselves. When they met, they met as peers on equal terms, the only

precedence being that given by courtesy. How, then, could the planter's

wife appreciate the dignity of a countess, who, on state occasions, must

walk behind a marchioness, who must walk behind a duchess, who must walk

behind a queen? Thus you see how it was that the sovereign ladies of

Maryland thought they were doing a very condescending thing in calling

upon the young stranger whose husband had deserted her, and whose

mother and sisters-in-law had left her alone; and that her ladyship had

committed a great act of ill-breeding and impertinence in declining

their visits.

At the close of the Washington season Mrs. Brudenell and her daughters

returned to the Hall. She told her friends that her son was traveling in

Europe; but she told her daughter-in-law that she only hoped he was

doing so; that she really had not heard a word from him, and did not

know anything whatever of his whereabouts.




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