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 season of belledom in being whirled from
festivity to festivity, in dancing in rooms festooned with thousands of
dollars' worth of flowers, in lunching or dining at tables loaded with
roses and violets and orchids, from which ballrooms or feasts she had
borne away wonderful "favours" and gifts, whose prices, being recorded
in the newspapers, caused a thrill of delight or envy to pass over the
land. She was a slim little creature, with quantities of light feathery
hair like a French doll's. She had small hands and small feet and a
small waist--a small brain also, it must be admitted, but she was an
innocent, sweet-tempered girl with a childlike simpleness of mind.
In fine, she was exactly the girl to find Sir Nigel's domineering