f beauty. Servants had
been hired through agencies known to Mr. Egremont, and Gregorio looked
very black at his mistress keeping the reins in her hand, and tried to
make her feel herself inefficient.

It was not an eventful or very interesting part of Ursula's life. She
was almost wild with the novelty and beauty of the South at first, but
except for what she could thus see, there was little variety. The
mould of the day was as much as possible after the Bridgefield fashion,
except that there were no cousins at the Rectory, no parish interests,
very little society, as far as the ladies were concerned. Mr. Egremont
had old acquaintance and associates with whom he spent afternoons and
evenings, after his own fashion, but they were not people to whom he
wished to introduce his wife and daughter.

And the superior English habitues of Nice, the families who formed the
regular society, knew Mr. Egremont's reputation sufficiently to feel by
no means disposed to be cordial to the fair wife and grown-up daughter
whom he so unexpectedly produced on the scene. It had been different
at home, where he had county standing, and the Canon and Canoness
answered for the newcomers; but here, where all sorts of strange people
came to the surface, the respectable felt it needful to be very
cautious, and though of course one or two ladies had been asked to call
through the intervention of Lady Kirkaldy or of Mrs. William Egremont,
and had been assured on their authority that it was 'all right,' their
attentions were clogged by doubt, and by reluctance to involve their
mankind in intimacy with the head of the family. Thus very little of
the proverbial gaiety of Nice offered itself to Nuttie and her mother,
and, except by a clerical family who knew Mr. Spyers, they were kept at
a distance, which Mr. Egremont perceived and resented by permitting no
advances. The climate suited him so well that, to his wife's great
relief, he seemed to have dropped his inclination for sedatives; but
his eyes would not bear much, and she felt bound to be always on the
alert, able to amuse him and hinder his feeling it dull. Gregorio
highly disapproved of the house and servants, and was always giving
hints that Mentone would agree far better with his master; but every
day that Mr. Egremont seemed sufficiently amused at Nice was so much
gain, and she had this in her favour, that he was always indolent and
hard to move. Moreover, between his master's levee a