“Oh, yes, you would. It is humiliation at every turn. It is to be checked in every generous impulse, to spend half your time in efforts to make a five-pound note do the work of ten sovereigns; it is to wear your George and Garter over a ragged shirt, and knock your diamond tiara against the roof of a hackney cab. I know what I am talking about, my dear, as most unhappy English land-owners do in this year of grace. I know that there is no misery so accursed as the combination of high place and narrow means. I came out here to relieve the strain a little. It was worse for the women than for me. You, my dear, are a high-mettled pony which kicks at carrying the money-bags. But my poor girls are high-mettled ponies which sweat under the halter and the cobble. That’s a good deal worse. You’ll have to buy a fine name with your big dower. But they will have to take what offers first, for they must go to their husbands portionless, or nearly so. And we were Thanes in Alfred’s time, my dear, and we fought for Harold tooth and nail, and we were at Runnymede, and at Bosworth, and at Tewkesbury, and all the rest of it, and our name is as old as the very hills round the Wrekin; and that, you see, is what an ancient lineage is worth in these days. Your father has the better part.” Katherine shook her head. “And honor?” she said in a low tone. Lord Framlingham laughed grimly. “When one is in debt to one’s banker and one’s tradesmen, and has to let one’s place to a sugar-baker, the less said about honor the better. I wish I were a monkey--don’t you wish you were one? They get such fun out of each other’s tails, and it must be such a jolly life swinging on branches and living on fruits. And if you like ancient lineage look at theirs!” She smiled, but her heart was heavy. She knew that she could not alter her fate, and she loathed it. “Do not misunderstand me,” she said, with a passing flush coming on her face. “Do not think me more stoical or philosophical than I am. It is probably pride not humility which makes me suffer so much from my sense of my parents’ present position. If I had been born in your class, in your world, I should probably have been odiously arrogant.” “I do not think you could be ‘odiously’ anything, my dear,” said Lord Framlingham with a smile. “Oh, yes, I can; I know it, I feel it, I regret it, and yet I cannot help it. When I am in their world, to which we have no right, to which we shall be only welcomed for reasons as discreditable to ourselves as to those who welcome us, I know that I offend everyone, and that I afflict, surprise and disappoint, my parents; but I cannot be otherwise; it is all I can do to keep in unspoken the bitter truths which rise to my lips.” “The _amari aliquid_ was never enclosed in a fairer crystal sphere,” said her host gallantly.