Lady Rossiter

“ Lady Rossiter mistakenly informed him; "she never has a civil word for anyone else, and she is perfectly brazen in boasting of the amount of extra work she does for him. She haunted the estate office when that other girl was ill, and took over her typewriting work in the calmest way. ”

“ He had frequently before heard Lady Rossiter moved to a very similar eloquence, but neither custom nor a resolute avoidance of any eye in the room could prevent him from wincing inwardly while her voice rang out.
"It almost seems to me that we forget sometimes—oh, I'm not speaking personally, Heaven knows, I'm weak enough myself—but sometimes I think we forget that it's flesh and blood like our own that we're dealing with. ”

“ It's motherhood that's lacking in their lives, Mark."
It might reasonably be supposed that such motherhood as the unfortunate victim to alcohol who had partnered Mark's few, unhappy years of matrimony had afforded to his children was as well out of their way, but Mark made no such unsympathetic rejoinder. He gazed at Lady Rossiter with the straight, candid look that had never held anything but honest gratitude and admiration for Sir Julian's beautiful wife. ”

“ He went to bed thanking God for this change in her. “I'll make her love me just as she used to, those days on our honeymoon. God bless her.”
Yes, Mrs. Rossiter was strangely altered. It all shows what one can do with a woman when one tries. Her hostile placidity had given place to something almost pathetic. One would have thought, had one not known that lady's invariable assurance of movement, that she was perplexed, almost distressed.
Peter was conscious that Clare was now as silent with her mother as she was with him. ”

“ Though not the most refined people in the world, the Rossiter-Brownes are very nice and very kind to me. Lady June, I dare say, would call them vulgar and second-class, and I am inclined to think they are what their own countrymen call shoddy. They have not always been rich as they are now. ”

“ For, when Fox was contesting the hard-won seat at Westminster, the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire offered to kiss all who voted for the great statesman. And fully as famous, and perhaps in a better cause, was the self-denying patriotism of the beautiful Lady Gordon, who, when the ranks of the Scottish regiments had been sadly thinned by cruel Badajoz and Salamanca, turned recruiting sergeant, and, to tempt the gallant lads, placed the recruiting shilling in her lips, from whence who would might take it with his own. ”

“ The gentleman, and others of the male sex, lay hands on the shoulders and touch the side of each other’s cheeks; but on being introduced to a lady, they say to her father or brother or friend, permettez moi, and salute each of her cheeks. ”

“ The kiss was, in process of time, used generally as a form of salutation in Rome where men testified their regard and the warmth of their welcome for each other chiefly by the number of their kisses. There was a curious law among the Romans made by Constantine; that, if a man had kissed his betrothed she gained thereby the half of his effects should he die before the celebration of the marriage; and should the lady herself die, under the same circumstances, her heirs or nearest to kin would take the half due her, a kiss among the ancients being the sign of plighted faith. ”

“ Solomon says of the flatterers and suppliants of his time, that they ceased not to kiss the hands of their patrons till they had obtained the favors which they had solicited. Cortez found the custom in Mexico, where upwards of a thousand of the nobility saluted him by touching the earth with their hands, which they carried afterwards to their mouths.
Kissing the hand is a national custom in Austria. A gentleman on meeting a lady friend kisses her hand, and does the same at parting from her. ”

“ II. How to kiss—The act fully described—Size of the mouth to be considered—Large mouths and those of the rose-bud sort—The girl who claws and struggles—Poetical directions—Dangers of hugging—Tapping the lips of a Mexican senorita—Kissing a Chinese girl—How to receive a kiss—Long-remembered kisses—The kiss in betrothal and marriage.
Having at least learned something as to the nature of a kiss, let us seek information on how to kiss. There are various general directions; the gentleman must be taller than the lady he intends to kiss. Take her right hand in yours and draw her gently to you ”

“ Rossiter?"
"I don't exactly remember," said Rossiter, basely. He felt Mrs. Russel's approval warm upon him, but was sorry to have failed Aunt Willoughby, who, disconcerted, relapsed into irrelevancy.
Miss Emily harked back.
"Oh, Hilary, you are awful—why shouldn't he?"
"Well, I didn't say he shouldn't, I simply said it was one. They'll be jealous of you at the office, won't they, Mr. Rossiter?"
Mr. Rossiter, eyeing her contemplatively, supposed that Miss Bevel was a "merry" girl.
"It may mean an occasion for Mr. Rossiter," said Mrs. Russel from her Olympia behind the urn. ”

“ Rossiter—as many a public man does and has to do—shoves his vain regrets, remorse, anxiety, weary longing for the unattainable—somewhere to the back of his brain, where these feelings will not revive till he lies awake at three in the morning; and prepares to entertain half-a-dozen hearty men and buxom women who are easily impressed by a little spoon-fed science. Linda is soon distracted from the scrap of paper in her bosom and gives all her attention to her cousins and grown-up school friends from Bradford and Northallerton who are delighted to see the New Year in amid the gaieties of London. ”

“ Dr. Rossiter was a little round fat man with snow-white hair, red cheeks and twinkling eyes. He cured his patients and irritated his relations by his good temper. Mrs. Rossiter, Peter thought, had a great resemblance to Bobby's mother, Mrs. Galleon, senior. They were, both of them, massive and phlegmatic. They had both acquired that solemn dignity that comes of living up to one's husband's reputation. They both looked on their families—Mrs. Rossiter on Clare and Mrs. Galleon on Millicent, Percival and Bobby—with curiosity, tolerance and a mild soft of wonder. ”

“ They went out very little into Society. Rossiter held that war-time parties were scandalous. He poohpoohed the idea that immodest dancing with frisky matrons or abandoned spinsters was necessary to restore the shell-shocked nerves of temporary captains, locally-ranked majors, or the recently-joined subaltern. He was far too busy for twaddly tea-fights and carping at hard-worked generals who were doing their best and a good best too. He and Linda did dine occasionally with Honoria, but the latter felt she could not let herself go about Vivie in the presence of Mrs. ”

“ Rossiter's mother had been a Miss Brew, and that the Brews were a great family in Boston. She was the mother of all Mr. Brokenshire's children. By looks and hints and sighs I gathered from Mrs. Rossiter that her father's second marriage had been a trial to his family. Not that there had been any social descent. On the contrary, the present Mrs. Brokenshire had been Editha Billing, of Philadelphia, and there could be nothing better than that. It was a question of fitness, of necessity, of age. "There was no need for him to marry again at all," Mrs. Rossiter complained. ”

“ In this way Rosette learned to read, to write, to keep accounts and to work beautifully. She became an accomplished musician, she knew how to draw and spoke several languages.
Rosette was the most beautiful, the most attractive, the most amiable and the most excellent princess in the whole world. She had never disobeyed her nurse or godmother, and had therefore never been reproved. She did not regret her father and mother, as she did not know them and she did not desire any other home than the farm where she had been so happy. ”

“ Rossiter was present he could do nothing right. If he were silent she would talk to Clare about people being morose; and what a pity it was that some people didn't think of other people a little instead of being miserable about things for which they had nobody to thank but themselves, and if he tried to be light-hearted and amusing Mrs. Rossiter bore with his humour in so patient and self-denying a spirit that his efforts failed lamentably and only made the situation worse than it had been before. ”

“ Rossitur was a man of cultivated mind and very refined and fastidious taste. He lived for the pleasures of art and literature, and the society where these are valued. For this, and not without some secret love of display, he lived in Paris; not extravagant in his pleasures, nor silly in his ostentation, but leading, like a gentleman, as worthy and rational a life as a man can lead who lives only to himself, with no further thought than to enjoy the passing hours. Mr. Rossitur enjoyed them elegantly, and, for a man of the world, moderately ”

“ Rossiter was disturbed at Clare's reticence. He fancied that he sometimes interrupted little conversations between the mother and the daughter the intention of which was, on Mrs. Rossiter's part at any rate, that “Clare should tell her something.” There was no doubt at all, that Mrs. Rossiter was anxious. Even—although this seemed impossible—she appeared to be ready to accept Peter as a friend and ally now—now after these many weeks of hostility. Surely women are strange creatures. In any case, one may observe the yellow brooch agitated now and ill at ease. ”

“ Rossiter was saying, trying to blow the mesh veil from between lips, while she undid the pin at the back of a frilled hat which would have looked equally well on a child of seven. “It is a dear little house, isn't it, Miss Perkins? But you must let me call you Nan. We all call you Nan—even Roger. He's so excited about your coming home. He said to Letitia only yesterday, 'I feel as if I had known Nan all my life.' Didn't he? You'll let me go up, dear, won't you? One does get a little bit grubby motoring, doesn't one?” ”

“ With elements as good as could be found anywhere to form a Society—that fusion of all varieties of achievement to which alone the word written with a capital can be applied—there was no one to form it. It was a woman's business; and for the rôle of hostess in the big sense the American woman, as far as I could judge, had little or no aptitude. She was too timid, too distrustful of herself, too much afraid of doing the wrong thing or of knowing the wrong people. She was so little sure of her standing that, as Mrs. Rossiter expressed it, she could be "queered" by shaking hands with Libby Jaynes. ”

“ Rossiter roused herself to something like cheerfulness and interest in the world about her for the sake of the man who, except to her, never mentioned Philip’s name, but who grew old and gray and bent so fast and sometimes even forgot to water his ferns and let them dry and wither in their pots, where they might have died but for his wife, who 325took charge of them herself, and gave them the care they needed. ”

“ Rossitur after a moment
A question men are not fond of answering, especially when they have not made up their minds. Mr. Rossitur was silent, and his wife too, after that.
"If I could get some long-headed Yankee to go along with him"--he remarked again, balancing his spoon on the edge of his cup in curious illustration of his own mental position at the moment; Donohan being the only fixed point and all the rest wavering in uncertainty. ”

“ What they have said is this, and it's what Mrs. Rossiter says—she said it to-day—that I'm only attractive to one man in five hundred—"
"But very attractive to him?"
"No; she didn't say that. She merely admitted that her brother Hugh was that man—"
He interrupted with something I wished at the time he hadn't said, and which I tried to ignore:
"He's the man in that five hundred—and I know another in another five hundred, which makes two in a thousand. You'd soon get up to a high percentage, when you think of all the men there are in the world." ”

“ Hugh Brokenshire, but never with any violent restriction on the part of Mrs. Rossiter. I say violent with intention, for she did intervene when she could do so. Only once did I hear that she knew he was kind to me, and that was from Larry Strangways. It was an observation he had overheard as it passed from Mrs. Rossiter to her husband, and which, in the spirit of our silent camaraderie, he thought it right to hand along.
"I can't be responsible for Hugh!" Mrs. Rossiter had said. "He's old enough to look after himself. If he wants a row with father he must have it ”

“ She kissed Rosette who was completely stupefied. The fairy then disappeared and the nurse burst into tears.
"Alas! it was not worth my while to give myself all the trouble of preparing this poor robe. Oh, my poor Rosette! Do not go to this festival. Pretend you are ill, my child."
"No," said Rosette; "that would be to displease my god-mother. I am sure that she does what is best for me. She is much wiser than I am. I will go and I will wear all that my godmother has brought me." And the good and obedient Rosette thought no more of her dress. She went to bed and slept tranquilly. ”

“ Rossitur's frowning brow looked very little like it.
"What do you say to our country life, sir?"
"It's a confounded life, sir," said Mr. Rossitur, taking a pamphlet from the table to fold and twist as he spoke,--"it is a confounded life; for the head and the hands must either live separate, or the head must do no other work but wait upon the hands. It is an alternative of loss and waste, sir."
"The alternative seems to be of--a--limited application," said the doctor, as Fleda, having found that Hugh and Barby had been beforehand with her, now came back to the company. ”