He stayed half an hour longer, and made himself
very agreeable. It seemed to Mrs. Luna now that he had every distinction
(she had known he had most), that he was really a charming man. He
abounded in conversation, till at last he took up his hat in earnest; he
talked about the state of the South, its social peculiarities, the ruin
wrought by the war, the dilapidated gentry, the queer types of
superannuated fire-eaters, ragged and unreconciled, all the pathos and
all the comedy of it, making her laugh at one moment, almost cry at
another, and say to herself throughout that when he took it into his
head there was no one who could make a lady's evening pass so
pleasantly. It was only afterwards that she asked herself why he had not
taken it into his head till the last, so quickly. She delighted in the
dilapidated gentry; her taste was completely different from her
sister's, who took an interest only in the lower class, as it struggled
to rise; what Adeline cared for was the fallen aristocracy (it seemed to
be falling everywhere very much; was not Basil Ransom an example of it?
was he not like a French _gentilhomme de province_ after the Revolution?
or an old monarchical _emigre_ from the Languedoc?), the despoiled
patriciate, I say, whose attitude was noble and touching, and toward
whom one might exercise a charity as discreet as their pride was
sensitive.
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