He quite honestly believed that a woman's chief object in life was to please her male belongings, and it seemed to him a perfectly good arrangement.
Not to please him, but because she was genuinely anxious to win Lady Gertrude's liking, Nan yielded.

Perhaps if she conceded this particular point it would pave the way towards a better understanding.
"Very well," she said, smiling.

"That especial frock shan't appear again while I'm down here.

But it's a duck of a frock, really, Roger!"-- with a feminine sigh of regret.
She was to find, however, as time went on, that there were very many other points over which she would have to accept Lady Gertrude's rulings.

Punctuality at meals was regarded at Trenby Hall as one of the laws of the Medes and Persians, and Nan, accustomed to the liberty generally accorded a musician in such matters, failed on more than one occasion to appear at lunch with the promptness expected of her.
In the West Parlour---a sitting-room which Lady Gertrude herself never used--there was a fairly good piano, and here Nan frequently found refuge, playing her heart out in the welcome solitude the room afforded.