It would have been well if Félicia had also been able to adopt this moderate view, and to concede to Usk the right of judging for himself. But she demanded not merely his passive permission, but his active approval, for all that she saw fit to do, and as he was not disposed to go a step beyond the line he had laid down, the relations between them became somewhat strained. The two lived in an atmosphere of argument. Even the low-toned conversations in the drawing-room at night were devoted to persistent efforts to make Usk confess that Félicia was in the right, and that her success was certain. He kept his temper admirably on the whole, but this led only to further attacks, for Félicia could not believe he was in earnest. She lost her temper somewhat frequently, but Usk understood that this was due to “nerves.” “I guess I know why you’d like to have me let things slide,” she said angrily one morning on the terrace. “You’re thinking of the dollars.” “The dollars! What dollars?” asked Usk. “Mine, of course. Pappa’s pile, which was to procure me the honour of admission into your noble family.” “Are you trying to see what I’m like when I’m ‘riz,’ as Hicks says?” asked Usk laughing. “Why, Fay, he would tell you that it was the thought of your dollars that frightened me more than anything--kept me back for ever so long.” “Then what was it made you conclude to go ahead at last?” “Look in the glass,” said Usk, and Félicia was mollified. “I’m real glad I have the dollars, any way,” she said, slipping her hand into his arm. “This place wants making over from cellar to garret.” “Does it? I suppose it seems so to other people, but it’s perfect to us. By the bye, Fay, you hurt old Wright’s feelings terribly the other day by depreciating his stables.” “Why, I only said I’d have those old shacks pulled down, and a real elegant range of stabling built--just like at Bagatelle.” “One may like good horses, and drive them too, without making palaces of their stables. Ours are all right.” “Well, I’ll never be satisfied until they’re just as good as those at Bagatelle, with all sorts of cunning little notions around everywhere. Why, even Baron von Neuburg had heard of the Bagatelle stables, and we made an excursion over there for the day, so’s he might see them. But there’s just everything to be done to this house and the grounds. I’ve an idea of a glass piazza to close in that upper terrace, but the whole front of the house wants modernising real badly.” Usk restrained himself with some difficulty. “Perhaps you don’t know that the Castle is considered one of the finest houses in the country?” he said. “It would be horribly out of character to try to make an American summer hotel out of it.” “Well, I’d as lief have it that as a ruin,” said Félicia indifferently. “But it don’t even look old, only shabby. That’s what I would just admire, to add on towers and battlements, and all that, and make it a real castle.”