“C. Q.” or, In the Wireless House
of which he was the London manager, by a coincidence no less extraordinary than it was timely, had proposed that he should open a similar branch in New York and temporarily become its resident agent. In other words, royalty had politely indicated that, although it was deeply pained to do so, it must, for policy’s sake, at least, withdraw that intimacy which it had previously been pleased to extend.
The slight did her moral character small good. She and her husband left England for New York, and at once a dozen other American beauties struggled furiously for her vacant place—beauties from Pittsburgh, from San Francisco, from Albany, and—be it whispered— from Brooklyn. Many a flower in the garden of English society has had its root in some vulgar suburb of an American city. Indeed usually the more vulgar the better, for it is the note of surprise, of unconventionality, of abandon, of irresponsibility and naïveté, which gives the American girl her vogue in London.
However, Mrs. Trevelyan’s dethronement in England was no obstacle to her social career in New York, and she cleverly made use of the notoriety surrounding her English life to45
