entertain a dislike to Tringle magnificence. There had been a good
deal of luxury at the bijou, but always with a feeling that it ought
not to be there,--that more money was being spent than prudence
authorised,--which had certainly added a savour to the luxuries. A
lovely bonnet, is it not more lovely because the destined wearer
knows that there is some wickedness in achieving it? All the bonnets,
all the claret, all the horses, seemed to come at Queen's Gate and at
Glenbogie without any wickedness. There was no more question about
them than as to one's ordinary bread and butter at breakfast. Sir
Thomas had a way,--a merit shall we call it or a fault?--of pouring
out his wealth upon the family as though it were water running in
perpetuity from a mountain tarn. Ayala the romantic, Ayala the
poetic, found very soon that she did not like it.

Perhaps the only pleasure left to the very rich is that of thinking
of the deprivations of the poor. The bonnets, and the claret, and the
horses, have lost their charm; but the Gladstone, and the old hats,
and the four-wheeled cabs of their neighbours, still have a little
flavour for them. From this source it seemed to Ayala that the
Tringles drew much of the recreation of their lives. Sir Thomas
had his way of enjoying this amusement, but it was a way that did
not specially come beneath Ayala's notice. When she heard that
Break-at-last, the Huddersfield manufacturer, had to sell his
pictures, and that all Shoddy and Stuffgoods' grand doings for
the last two years had only been a flash in the pan, she did not
understand enough about it to feel wounded; but when she heard her
aunt say that people like the Poodles had better not have a place
in Scotland than have to let it, and when Augusta hinted that Lady
Sophia Smallware had pawned her diamonds, then she felt that her
nearest and dearest relatives smelt abominably of money.

Of all the family Sir Thomas was most persistently the kindest to
her, though he was a man who did not look to be kind. She was pretty,
and though he was ugly himself he liked to look at things pretty. He
was, too, perhaps, a little tired of his own wife and daughters,--who
were indeed what he had made them, but still were not quite to his
taste. In a general way he gave instructions that Ayala should
be treated exactly as a daughter, and he informed his wife that
he intended to add a codicil to his will on her behalf. "Is that
necessary?" asked Lady Tringle,