discovered, in the first place, that she would never have five
scudi of her own in her pocket, and that if she needed a
handkerchief or a pair of stockings it was necessary to obtain
from the head of the house not only the permission to buy such
necessaries, but the money with which to pay for them. She
discovered, furthermore, that if she wanted a cup of coffee or
some bread and butter out of hours, those things were charged to
her daily account in the steward's office, as though she had been
in an inn, and were paid for at the end of the year out of the
income arising from her dowry. Her husband's younger brother, who
had no money of his own, could not even get a lemonade in his
father's house without his father's consent.

Moreover, the family life was of such a nature as almost to
preclude all privacy. The young Duchessa and her husband had their
bedroom in the upper story, but Don Lotario's request that his
wife might have a sitting-room of her own was looked upon as an
attempt at a domestic revolution, and the privilege was only
obtained at last through the formidable intervention of the Duke
of Agincourt, the Duchessa's own father. All the family meals,
too, were eaten together in the solemn old dining-hall, hung with
tapestries and dingy with the dust of ages. The order of
precedence was always strictly observed, and though the cooking
was of a strange kind, no plate or dish was ever used which was
not of solid silver, battered indeed, and scratched, and cleaned
only after Italian ideas, but heavy and massive withal. The
Duchessa soon learned that the old Roman houses all used silver
plates from motives of economy, for the simple reason that metal
did not break. But the sensible English woman saw also that
although the most rigid economy was practised in many things,