But this did not advance the fortunes of Sir Nigel, who personally required of her very different things.  Two weeks after her arrival at Stornham, Rosalie began to see that somehow she was regarded as a person almost impudently in the wrong.  It appeared that if she had been an English girl she would have been quite different, that she would have been an advantage instead of a detriment.  As an American she was a detriment.  That seemed to go without saying.  She tried to do everything she was told, and learn something from each cold insinuation.  She did not know that her very amenability and timidity were her undoing.  Sir Nigel and his mother thoroughly enjoyed themselves at her expense.  They knew they could say anything they chose, and that at the most she would only break down into crying and afterwards apologise for being so badly behaved.  If some practical, strong-minded person had been near to defend her she might have been rescued promptly and her tyrants routed.  But she was a young girl, tender of heart and weak of nature.  She used to cry a great deal when she was alone, and when she wrote to her mother she was too frightened to tell the truth concerning her unhappiness.

“Oh, if I could just see some of them!” she would wail to herself.  “If I could just see mother or father or anybody from New York!  Oh, I know I shall never see New York again, or Broadway or Fifth Avenue or Central Park—­I never—­never—­never shall!” And she would grovel among her pillows, burying her face and half stifling herself lest her sobs should be heard.  Her feeling for her husband had become one of terror and repulsion.  She was almost more afraid of his patronising, affectionate moments than she was of his temper.

His conjugal condescensions made her feel vaguely—­without knowing why—­as if she were some lower order of little animal.

American women, he said, had no conception of wifely duties and affection.  He had a great deal to say on the subject of wifely duty.  It was part of her duty as a wife to be entirely satisfied with his society, and to be completely happy in the pleasure it afforded her.  It was her wifely duty not to talk about her own family and palpitatingly expect letters by every American mail.  He objected intensely to this letter writing and receiving, and his mother shared his prejudices.

“You have married an Englishman,” her ladyship said.  “You have put it out of his power to marry an Englishwoman, and the least consideration you can show is to let New York and Nine-hundredth street remain upon the other side of the Atlantic and not insist on dragging them into Stornham Court.”