"When you have a son," her mother-in-law had remarked severely, "I suppose something will be done for Nigel and the estate."This had been said before she had been ten days in the house, and had set her not-too-quick brain working.She had already begun to see that life at Stornham Court was not the luxurious affair it was in the house in Fifth Avenue.Things were shabby and queer and not at all comfortable.Fires were not lighted because a day was chilly and gloomy.She had once asked for one in her bedroom and her mother-in-law had reproved her for indecent extravagance in a manner which took her breath away.
"I suppose in America you have your house at furnace heat in July," she said."Mere wastefulness and self-indulgence!
That is why Americans are old women at twenty.They are shrivelled and withered by the unhealthy lives they lead.
Stuffing themselves with sweets and hot bread and never breathing the fresh air."Rosalie could not at the moment recall any withered and shrivelled old women of twenty, but she blushed and stammered as usual.
"It is never cold enough for fires in July," she answered, "but we--we never think fires extravagant when we are not comfortable without them.""Coal must be cheaper than it is in England," said her ladyship."When you have a daughter, I hope you do not expect to bring her up as girls are brought up in New York."This was the first time Rosalie had heard of her daughter, and she was not ready enough to reply.She naturally went into her room and cried again, wondering what her father and mother would say if they knew that bedroom fires were considered vulgarly extravagant by an impressive member of the British aristocracy.
She was not at all strong at the time and was given to feeling chilly and miserable on wet, windy days.She used to cry more than ever and was so desolate that there were days when she used to go to the vicarage for companionship.On such days the vicar's wife would entertain her with stories of the villagers' catastrophes, and she would empty her purse upon the tea table and feel a little consoled because she was the means of consoling someone else.
"I suppose it gratifies your vanity to play the Lady Bountiful," Sir Nigel sneered one evening, having heard in the village what she was doing.
"I--never thought of such a thing," she stammered feebly.
"Mrs.Brent said they were so poor."
"You throw your money about as if you were a child,"said her mother-in-law."It is a pity it is not put in the hands of some person with discretion."It had begun to dawn upon Rosalie that her ladyship was deeply convinced that either herself or her son would be admirably discreet custodians of the money referred to.And even the dawning of this idea had frightened the girl.She was so inexperienced and ignorant that she felt it might be possible that in England one's husband and one's mother-in-law could do what they liked.It might be that they could take possession of one's money as they seemed to take possession of one's self and one's very soul.She would have been very glad to give them money, and had indeed wondered frequently if she might dare to offer it to them, if they would be outraged and insulted and slay her in their wrath at her purse-proud daring.
She had tried to invent ways in which she could approach the subject, but had not been able to screw up her courage to any sticking point.She was so overpowered by her consciousness that they seemed continually to intimate that Americans with money were ostentatious and always laying stress upon the amount of their possessions.She had no conception of the primeval simpleness of their attitude in such matters, and that no ceremonies were necessary save the process of transferring sufficiently large sums as though they were the mere right of the recipients.She was taught to understand this later.In the meantime, however, ready as she would have been to give large sums if she had known how, she was terrified by the thought that it might be possible that she could be deprived of her bank account and reduced to the condition of a sort of dependent upon the humours of her lately acquired relations.
