been cheery, amiable.  At Stornham, Rosalie sat at breakfast before unchanging boiled eggs, unfailing toast and unalterable broiled bacon, morning after morning.  Sir Nigel sat and munched over the newspapers, his mother, with an air of relentless disapproval from a lofty height of both her food and companions, disposed of her eggs and her rasher at Rosalie’s right hand.  She had transferred to her daughter-in-law her previously occupied seat at the head of the table.  This had been done with a carefully prepared scene of intense though correct disagreeableness, in which she had managed to convey all the rancour of her dethroned spirit and her disapproval and disdain of international alliances.

“It is of course proper that you should sit at the head of your husband’s table,” she had said, among other agreeable things.  “A woman having devoted her life to her son must relinquish her position to the person he chooses to marry.  If you should have a son you will give up your position to his wife.  Since Nigel has married you, he has, of course, a right to expect that you will at least make an effort to learn something of what is required of women of your position.”

“Sit down, Rosalie,” said Nigel.  “Of course you take the head of the table, and naturally you must learn what is expected of my wife, but don’t talk confounded rubbish, mother, about devoting your life to your son.  We have seen about as little of each other as we could help.  We never agreed.”  They were both bullies and each made occasional efforts at bullying the other without any particular result.  But each could at least bully the other into intensified unpleasantness.

The vicar’s wife having made her call of ceremony upon the new Lady Anstruthers, followed up the acquaintance, and found her quite exotically unlike her mother-in-law, whose charities one may be sure had neither been lavish nor dispensed by any hand less impressive than her own.  The younger woman was of wholly malleable material.  Her sympathies were easily awakened and her purse was well filled and readily opened.  Small families or large ones, newly born infants or newly buried ones, old women with “bad legs” and old men who needed comforts, equally touched her heart.  She innocently bestowed sovereigns where an Englishwoman would have known that half-crowns would have been sufficient.  As the vicaress was her almoner that lady felt her importance rapidly on the increase.  When she left a cottage saying, “I’ll speak to young Lady Anstruthers about you,” the good woman of the house curtsied low and her husband touched his forehead respectfully.