His brother accused him of carrying his idolatry of “good form” to a snobbish extent, but Allen could carry it out so naturally that no one could have suspected that he had not been to the manner born.  If he did appreciate the society of people with handles to their names, he comported himself among them as their easy equal; and he was so lavish as to be a very popular man.  He had no vicious tastes or tendencies, and was too gentlemanly and quiet ever to come into collision with the authorities.  At home, except when his notions of “good form” were at variance with strong opinions of his mother’s, nothing could be more chivalrously deferential than his whole demeanour to her; and the worst that could be said of him was that he managed to waste a large amount of time and money with very little to show for it.  His profession was to be son and heir to a large fortune, and he took to the show part of the affair very kindly.

But was this being the man his father had expected him to be?  The thought would come across Caroline at times, but not very often, as she floated along easily in the stream of life.  Most of the business troubles of her property were spared her by her trustees, and her income was so large that even Allen’s expenditure had not yet been felt as an inconvenience.  As to the responsibilities, she contributed largely to county subscriptions, gave her clergyman whatever he asked, provided Christmas treats and summer teas for their school-children, and permitted Miss Ogilvie and Babie to do whatever they pleased among the poor when they were at home.  But she was not very much at Belforest.  She generally came there at Midsummer and at Christmas, and filled the house with friends.  All kinds of amusements astonished the neighbourhood, and parties of the newest kinds, private theatricals, tableaux, charades, all that taste or ingenuity could devise were in vogue.

But before the spring east winds the party were generally gone to some more genial climate, and the early autumn was often spent in Switzerland.  Pictures, art, and scenery were growing to be necessaries of life, and to stay at home with no special diversion in view seemed unthought of.  The season was spent in London, not dropping the artist society on the one hand, but adding to it the amount of intercourse into which she was drawn by the fact of her being a rich and charming woman, having a delightful house, and a son and daughter who might be “grands partis.”  Allen liked high life for her, so she did not refuse it; but probably her social success was all the greater from her entire indifference, and that of her daughter, to all the questions of exclusiveness and fashion.  If they had been born duchesses they could not have been less concerned about obtaining invitations to what their maid called “the first circles,” and they would sometimes reduce Allen to despair by giving the preference to a lively literary soiree, when he wanted them to show themselves among the aristocracy at a drum.