She did not want to hurt any one's feelings.

How could she tell this childlike, optimistic creature that to put Mathilde to living in surroundings like these would be like exposing a naked baby on a mountaintop?
It wasn't love of luxury, at least not if luxury meant physical self-indulgence.
She could imagine suffering privations very happily in a Venetian palace or on a tropical island.

It was an esthetic, not a moral, problem; it was a question of that profound and essential thing in the life of any woman who was a woman--her charm.

She wished to tell Mrs.Wayne that her son wouldn't really like it, that he would hate to see Mathilde going out in overshoes; that the background that she, Adelaide, had so expertly provided for her child was part of the very attraction that made him want to take her out of it.

There was no use in saying that most poor mortals were forced to get on without this magic atmosphere.