Sink or Swim? , Volume II by Matilda Charlotte Houstoun

When blustering March was over, and the dead season of the year had been / for rich, as well as poor, got through, the widow of the lamented Cecil / Vavasour commenced -- for the first time since his death -- making / preparations for a three-months' sojourn in London, or, as the / newspapers expressed it, "Lady Millicent Vavasour, her family and suite, / were about, during the ensuing season, to occupy the mansion in / Bolton-square, to her ladyship belonging."

In the course of the six years that Lady Millicent had passed in a / seclusion which she had not attempted to render otherwise than irksome / to her daughters, the above-named mansion had been let -- as each / revolving season came round -- to the highest bidder. It was not a very / dignified proceeding, and her children (her sons especially) had chafed / both inwardly and outwardly against what _they_ considered their / mother's "dirty economy," in thus making money out of the family bricks / and mortar. The tide of public opinion in London, as well as in the / country, set strongly against the wealthy, parsimonious widow, whose / accumulated riches benefited so few of the persons whom common sense, as / well as the laws of nature and of precedent, pointed out as amongst / those destined to reap advantage from the seed scattered by Lady / Millicent's hand; while, as regarded her ladyship's sons, it was a / melancholy fact, that for lack of a home, humanly speaking, those young / gentlemen had in their nonage gone a good deal, as the saying is, "to / the bad."