“Why will you always talk about money, Daddy? It is a very vulgar habit.”
“Money’s like robust health,” said Daddy. “Vulgar if you like, but deuced comfortable to those who have got it.”
Hurstmanceaux, as he walked down Pall Mall a few moments later, felt irrationally disappointed that she had gone to America. No doubt she had gone to look after her property there, but he did not think that the person he had seen, with her large, dark, calm eyes and her stately grace, ought to care whether those millions of acres and billions of dollars diminished or increased. If her attitude and expressions in his presence had been real, and not affected, she could not care. He regretted that he had written that letter to her from Cowes. It had been written from his heart on a generous impulse; and he knew life well enough to know that our generous impulses are the costliest of all our indulgences.
When he thought also of all which she might know—which she certainly must suspect—of the sister whom he had loved so well, he suffered as only a man of tender heart and sensitive honor can suffer when wounded in his family pride and his natural affections.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
With the following March London saw once more the Duchess of Otterbourne carrying her graceful presence to Court and salon and theatre, having recovered her beauty and with it her spirits. One of those fortunate incidents of which life is prodigal to its favorites had happened. An old aunt had died and left her a legacy of a few thousands; enough thousands to make a year at least pass smoothly, without too much self-denial.
She was pleased to have a little ready money, indisputably her own, which had come to her in a most respectable manner, and could be squandered just as she chose, without the interference of anybody. Millions do not really afford you the smallest satisfaction if somebody stands over you to see how you spend them.
The insolence and the courage of her character brought her back to the scene of her slavery to William Massarene. She felt that it was necessary to show her brother that she did not care a straw for his condemnation, and to prove to society in general that her position was unshaken. Who could tell how that young woman, who had sent her the counterfoils and the acceptances, might not have talked? Besides, she wished to see her children. Her affection for them was genuine. It was not profound or unselfish, it was not tender or ideal, but it was a real affection in its way; and, besides, she was proud of them. They were the handsomest little people in England; always well and always strong. Against Jack she bore a grudge—unreasoningly and unkindly—but still, she wished to have him with her in London. The presence of the little duke and his brothers and sister in her new house would prove to people that her conduct had always been perfectly correct.
“One does miss one’s children so cruelly,” she said to her sister Carrie, who answered: “Yes, one does; it is like losing one’s dressing-bag.”
She fully expected Hurstmanceaux to forbid their coming to her, but he left the matter to the Ormes’s decision; he was at Faldon, and gave no opinion one way or the other. To her intimate friends she attributed her rupture with him to his extreme severity and unkindness about the Otterbourne diamonds and her own financial affairs; and, as she was always a popular person, and he never was, her version was accepted and circulated, and the opinion of the world was indulgent to her.