He felt as though someone had threatened his right to invest his money at five per cent.

Jolyon had spoiled her.
None of his girls would have said such a thing.

James had always been exceedingly liberal to his children, and the consciousness of this made him feel it all the more deeply.

He trifled moodily with his strawberries, then, deluging them with cream, he ate them quickly; they, at all events, should not escape him.
No wonder he was upset.

Engaged for fifty-four years (he had been admitted a solicitor on the earliest day sanctioned by the law) in arranging mortgages, preserving investments at a dead level of high and safe interest, conducting negotiations on the principle of securing the utmost possible out of other people compatible with safety to his clients and himself, in calculations as to the exact pecuniary possibilities of all the relations of life, he had come at last to think purely in terms of money.