Immense possessions and lavish expenditure may be, as we all know, so
softened by antiquity, or so masked by taste, as not to jar with ideals
the most different or remote. But here "proputty! proputty!" was the cry
of every ugly wood and tasteless shrubbery, whereas the prospective
owner of them, according to his public utterances and career, was
magnificently careless of property--was, in fact, in the eyes of the
lovers of property, its enemy. The house again spoke loudly and
aggressively of money; yet it was the home of a champion of the poor.
Well--a man cannot help it, if his father has suffered from stupidity
and bad taste; and encumbrances of this kind are more easily created
than got rid of. No doubt Oliver Marsham's democratic opinions had been
partly bred in him by opposition and recoil. Diana seemed to get a good
deal of rather comforting light on the problem by looking at it from
this point of view.
Indeed, she thought over it persistently while she dressed. From the
normal seven-hours' sleep of youth she had awakened with braced nerves.
To remember her duel of the night before was no longer to thrill with an
excitement inexplicable even to herself, and strangely mingled with a
sense of loneliness or foreboding.
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