March can talk with you about your favorite Boston. He's just turned
his back on it."
"Oh, I hope not!" said Miss Vance. "I can't imagine anybody voluntarily
leaving Boston."
"I don't say he's so bad as that," said the host, committing March to
her. "He came to New York because he couldn't help it--like the rest of
us. I never know whether that's a compliment to New York or not."
They talked Boston a little while, without finding that they had common
acquaintance there; Miss Vance must have concluded that society was much
larger in Boston than she had supposed from her visits there, or else
that March did not know many people in it. But she was not a girl to care
much for the inferences that might be drawn from such conclusions; she
rather prided herself upon despising them; and she gave herself to the
pleasure of being talked to as if she were of March's own age. In the
glow of her sympathetic beauty and elegance he talked his best, and tried
to amuse her with his jokes, which he had the art of tingeing with a
little seriousness on one side. He made her laugh; and he flattered her
by making her think; in her turn she charmed him so much by enjoying what
he said that he began to brag of his wife, as a good husband always does
when another woman charms him; and she asked, Oh was Mrs.
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