Why should Lady Castlewood put herself out of the way to welcome the
young stranger? Because he was friendless? Only a simpleton could ever
imagine such a reason as that. People of fashion, like her ladyship, are
friendly to those who have plenty of friends. A poor lad, alone, from a
distant country, with only very moderate means, and those not as yet in
his own power, with uncouth manners very likely, and coarse provincial
habits; was a great lady called upon to put herself out of the way for
such a youth? Allons donc! He was quite as well at the alehouse as at the
castle.

This, no doubt, was her ladyship's opinion, which her kinswoman, the
Baroness Bernstein, who knew her perfectly well, entirely understood. The
Baroness, too, was a woman of the world, and, possibly, on occasion,
could be as selfish as any other person of fashion. She fully understood
the cause of the deference which all the Castlewood family showed to her
--mother, and daughter, and sons,--and being a woman of great humour,
played upon the dispositions of the various members of this family,
amused herself with their greedinesses, their humiliations, their artless
respect for her money-box, and clinging attachment to her purse. They
were not very rich; Lady Castlewood's own money was settled on her
children. The two elder had inherited nothing but flaxen heads from their
German mother, and a pedigree of prodigious distinction. But those who
had money, and those who had none, were alike eager for the Baroness's;
in this matter the rich are surely quite as greedy as the poor.

So if Madam Bernstein struck her hand on the table, and caused the
glasses and the persons round it to tremble at her wrath, it was because
she was excited with plenty of punch and champagne, which her ladyship
was in the habit of taking freely, and because she may have had a
generous impulse when generous wine warmed her blood, and felt indignant