Among other
things, he did not intend that a lot of American relations should come
tumbling in when they chose to cross the Atlantic. He would not have it,
and took discreet steps to prevent any accident of the sort. He wrote
to America occasionally himself, and knowing well how to make himself
civilly repellent, so subtly chilled his parents-in-law as to discourage
in them more than once their half-formed plan of paying a visit to their
child in her new home. He opened, read and reclosed all epistles to
and from New York, and while Mrs. Vanderpoel was much hurt to find
that Rosalie never condescended to make any response to her tentatives
concerning her possible visit, Rosalie herself was mystified by the fact
that the journey "to Europe" was never spoken of.
"I don't see why they never seem to think of coming over," she said
plaintively one day. "They used to talk so much about it."
"They?" ejaculated the Dowager Lady Anstruthers. "Whom may you mean?"
"Mother and father and Betty and some of the others."
Her mother-in-law put up her eye-glasses to stare at her.
"The whole family?" she inquired.
"There are not so many of them," Rosalie answered.
"A family is always too many to descend upon a young woman when she is
married," observed her ladyship unmovedly.
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