She was a girl of genuine sympathies, intellectual rather than sentimental.

In fact, she was an intellectual person, whom qualities of the heart saved from being disagreeable, as they saved her on the other hand from being worldly or cruel in her fashionableness.
She had read a great many books, and had ideas about them, quite courageous and original ideas; she knew about pictures--she had been in Wetmore's class; she was fond of music; she was willing to understand even politics; in Boston she might have been agnostic, but in New York she was sincerely religious; she was very accomplished; and perhaps it was her goodness that prevented her feeling what was not best in Beaton.
"Do you think," she said, after the retreat of one of the comers and goers left her alone with him again, "that those young ladies would like me to call on them ?" "Those young ladies ?" Beaton echoed.

"Miss Leighton and--" "No; I have been there with my aunt's cards already." "Oh yes," said Beaton, as if he had known of it; he admired the pluck and pride with which Alma had refrained from ever mentioning the fact to him, and had kept her mother from mentioning it, which must have been difficult.
"I mean the Miss Dryfooses.

It seems really barbarous, if nobody goes near them.

We do all kinds of things, and help all kinds of people in some ways, but we let strangers remain strangers unless they know how to make their way among us." "The Dryfooses certainly wouldn't know how to make their way among you," said Beaton, with a sort of dreamy absence in his tone.
Miss Vance went on, speaking out the process of reasoning in her mind, rather than any conclusions she had reached.