or marry, or meet with an accident, his notes of condolence or
congratulation are prompt and civil, but the actual truth is that he
cares nothing whatever about you or your relations, and if you don't
please him he does not hesitate to sulk or be astonishingly rude, which
last an American does not allow himself to be, as a rule."

By many people Sir Nigel was not analysed, but accepted. He was of the
early English who came to New York, and was a novelty of interest, with
his background of Manor House and village and old family name. He was
very much talked of at vivacious ladies' luncheon parties, he was very
much talked to at equally vivacious afternoon teas. At dinner parties he
was furtively watched a good deal, but after dinner when he sat with
the men over their wine, he was not popular. He was not perhaps exactly
disliked, but men whose chief interest at that period lay in stocks
and railroads, did not find conversation easy with a man whose sole
occupation had been the shooting of birds and the hunting of foxes,
when he was not absolutely loitering about London, with his time on his
hands. The stories he told--and they were few--were chiefly anecdotes
whose points gained their humour by the fact that a man was a comically
bad shot or bad rider and either peppered a gamekeeper or was thrown
into a ditch when his horse went over a hedge, and such relations
did not increase in the poignancy of their interest by being filtered
through brains accustomed to applying their powers to problems of
speculation and commerce. He was not so dull but that he perceived
this at an early stage of his visit to New York, which was probably the
reason of the infrequency of his stories.

He on his side was naturally not quick to rise to the humour of a "big
deal" or a big blunder made on Wall Street--or to the wit of jokes
concerning them. Upon the whole he would have been glad to have
understood such matters more clearly. His circumstances were such as
had at last forced him to contemplate the world of money-makers with
something of an annoyed respect. "These fellows" who had neither
titles nor estates to keep up could make money. He, as he acknowledged
disgustedly to himself, was much worse than a beggar. There was Stornham
Court in a state of ruin--the estate going to the dogs, the farmhouses
tumbling to pieces and he, so to speak, without a sixpence to bless
himself with, and head over heels in debt. Englishmen of the rank which