"Oh I mean she's always engaged to some young man who belongs to her earlier phase."
"Her earlier phase?"
"The time before she had made herself--when she lived unconscious of her powers. A young man from Utica, say. They usually have to wait; he's probably in a store. It's a long engagement."
Count Otto somehow preferred to understand as little as possible.
"Do you mean a betrothal--to take effect?"
"I don't mean anything German and moonstruck. I mean that piece of peculiarly American enterprise a premature engagement--to take effect, but too complacently, at the end of time."
Vogelstein very properly reflected that it was no use his having entered the diplomatic career if he weren't able to bear himself as if this interesting generalisation had no particular message for him. He did Mrs. Bonnycastle moreover the justice to believe that she wouldn't have approached the question with such levity if she had supposed she should make him wince. The whole thing was, like everything else, but for her to laugh at, and the betrayal moreover of a good intention. "I see, I see--the self-made girl has of course always had a past. Yes, and the young man in the store--from Utica--is part of her past."
"You express it perfectly," said Mrs. Bonnycastle. "I couldn't say it better myself."
"But with her present, with her future, when they change like this young lady's, I suppose everything else changes. How do you say it in America? She lets him slide."
"We don't say it at all!" Mrs. Bonnycastle cried. "She does nothing of the sort; for what do you take her? She sticks to him; that at least is what we EXPECT her to do," she added with less assurance.