And as the new Lady Anstruthers was half led, half dragged, in
humiliated hysteric disorder up the staircase, he took his mother by the
elbow, marched her into the nearest room and shut the door. There they
stood and stared at each other, breathing quick, enraged breaths and
looking particularly alike with their heavy-featured, thick-skinned,
infuriated faces.

It was the Dowager who spoke first, and her whole voice and manner
expressed all she intended that they should, all the derision, dislike
and scathing resignment to a grotesque fate.

"Well," said her ladyship. "So THIS is what you have brought home from
America!"



CHAPTER IV

A MISTAKE OF THE POSTBOY'S

As the weeks passed at Stornham Court the Atlantic Ocean seemed to
Rosalie Anstruthers to widen endlessly, and gay, happy, noisy New York
to recede until it was as far away as some memory of heaven. The girl
had been born in the midst of the rattling, rumbling bustle, and it
had never struck her as assuming the character of noise; she had only
thought of it as being the cheerful confusion inseparable from town. She
had been secretly offended and hurt when strangers said that New York
was noisy and dirty; when they called it vulgar, she never wholly
forgave them. She was of the New Yorkers who adore their New York
as Parisians adore Paris and who feel that only within its beloved