In any case, I rely on the sympathy and forbearance of the
man to whom I owe my life.
"After what I have now written, there is only one thing to add: I
beg to decline accepting your excuses, and I shall expect to see
you to-morrow evening, as we arranged. I am an obstinate old woman,
but I am also your faithful friend and servant,
"MARY CALLENDER."
Ernest looked up from the letter. "What can this possibly mean?"
he wondered.
But he was too sensible a man to be content with wondering; he
decided on keeping his engagement.
What Dr. Johnson called "the insolence of wealth" appears far more
frequently in the houses of the rich than in the manners of the
rich. The reason is plain enough. Personal ostentation is, in the
very nature of it, ridiculous; but the ostentation which exhibits
magnificent pictures, priceless china, and splendid furniture,
can purchase good taste to guide it, and can assert itself without
affording the smallest opening for a word of depreciation or a look
of contempt. If I am worth a million of money, and if I am dying
to show it, I don't ask you to look at me, I ask you to look at my
house.
Keeping his engagement with Mrs. Callender, Ernest discovered that
riches might be lavishly and yet modestly used.
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