annot pay your tailor. Neither the Bishop nor I can do anything
for you and I hope you don't expect it. All I can hope is that you know
yourself what you are going to America in search of, and that it is
something more practical than buffaloes. You had better stop in New
York. Those big shopkeepers' daughters are enormously rich, they say,
and they are immensely pleased by attentions from men of your class.
They say they'll marry anything if it has an aunt or a grandmother with
a title. You can mention the Marchioness, you know. You need not refer
to the fact that she thought your father a blackguard and your mother an
interloper, and that you have never been invited to Broadmere since you
were born. You can refer casually to me and to the Bishop and to the
Palace, too. A Palace--even a Bishop's--ought to go a long way with
Americans. They will think it is something royal." She ended her remarks
with one of her most insulting snorts of laughter, and Sir Nigel became
dark red and looked as if he would like to knock her down.

It was not, however, her sentiments which were particularly revolting to
him. If she had expressed them in a manner more flattering to himself he
would have felt that there was a good deal to be said for them. In
fact, he had put the same thing to himself some time previously, and, in
summing up the American matter, had reached certain thrifty decisions.
The impulse to knock her down surged within him solely because he had a
brutally bad temper when his vanity was insulted, and he was furious at
her impudence in speaking to him as if he were a villager out of work
whom she was at liberty to bully and lecture.

"For a woman who is supposed to have been born of gentle people," he
said to his mother afterwards, "Aunt Marian is the most vulgar old beast
I have ever beheld. She has the taste of a female costermonger." Which
was entirely true, but it might be added that his own was no better and
his points of view and morals wholly coincided with his taste.

Naturally Rosalie Vanderpoel knew nothing of this side of the matter.
She had been a petted, butterfly child, who had been pretty and admired
and indulged from her infancy; she had grown up into a petted, butterfly
girl, pretty and admired and surrounded by inordinate luxury. Her world
had been made up of good-natured, lavish friends and relations, who
enjoyed themselves and felt a delight in her girlish toilettes and
triumphs. She had spent her one