Her irritation came, at bottom, from the sense, which, always present, had suddenly grown acute, that the social soil on this big, vague continent was somehow not adapted for growing those plants whose fragrance she especially inclined to inhale and by which she liked to see herself surrounded--a species of vegetation for which she carried a collection of seedlings, as we may say, in her pocket.

She found her chief happiness in the sense of exerting a certain power and making a certain impression; and now she felt the annoyance of a rather wearied swimmer who, on nearing shore, to land, finds a smooth straight wall of rock when he had counted upon a clean firm beach.

Her power, in the American air, seemed to have lost its prehensile attributes; the smooth wall of rock was insurmountable.
"Surely je n'en suis pas la," she said to herself, "that I let it make me uncomfortable that a Mr.Robert Acton should n't honor me with a visit!" Yet she was vexed that he had not come; and she was vexed at her vexation.
Her brother, at least, came in, stamping in the hall and shaking the wet from his coat.

In a moment he entered the room, with a glow in his cheek and half-a-dozen rain-drops glistening on his mustache.

"Ah, you have a fire," he said.
"Les beaux jours sont passes," replied the Baroness.
"Never, never! They have only begun," Felix declared, planting himself before the hearth.