Discussion Groups / English Usage / February 2004

Hello:

Wrt:
---------
"I have known a great deal of the trouble of annuities; for my mother
was clogged with the payment of three to old superannuated servants by
my father's will, and it is amazing how disagreeable she found
it. Twice every year these annuities were to be paid; and then there
was the trouble of getting it to them; and then one of them was said
to have died, and afterwards it turned out to be no such thing. My
mother was quite sick of it. Her income was not her own, she said,
with such perpetual claims on it; and it was the more unkind IN my
father, because, otherwise, the money would have been entirely at my
mother's disposal, without any restriction whatever. It has given me
such an abhorrence of annuities, that I am sure I would not pin myself
down to the payment of one for all the world."
[Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility, Chapter 2]
http://www.freebooks.biz/Classics/Austen/Sense/Sense02_2.htm
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What a pearl in describing human perfidy this chapter is!

Now, getting back to my grammatical sheeps:-), I would like to know if
"in" in "it was the more unkind in my father" is equivalent to
"of"
or
"on behalf of"?

Is this an old-fashioned usage, in these times?

Thank you.