The young man was in a riding suit that was too correct at every point for good taste, except in a college youth, and would have made upon anyone who had been born, or initiated into, the real mysteries of "good form" an impression similar to that of Mrs.Whitney's costume and accent and manner.

There was the note of the fashion plate, the evidence of pains, of correctness not instinctive but studied--the marks our new-sprung obstreperous aristocracy has made familiar to us all.

It would have struck upon a sense of humor like a trivial twitter from the oboe trickling through a lull in the swell of brasses and strings; but Hiram Ranger had no sense of humor in that direction, had only his instinct for the right and the wrong.

The falseness, the absence of the quality called "the real thing," made him bitter and sad.

And, when his son joined them and walked up and down with them, he listened with heavier droop of face and form to the affected chatter of the young "man of the world" and the old "_grande dame_" of Chicago society.