f that man is notable who has mastered one
thing well, Patterson Pomfret was a notable man: he had mastered the
possibilities of his income, and never in any year had he gone beyond it
by so much as a sole d vin blanc or a pair of red silk stockings. When
he died, he left a worthy financial successor in his wife.

Mrs. Pomfret, knowing the income, after an exhaustive search decided
upon Leith as the place to build her villa. It must be credited to her
foresight that, when she built, she saw the future possibilities of the
place. The proper people had started it. And it must be credited to her
genius that she added to these possibilities of Leith by bringing
to it such families as she thought worthy to live in the
neighbourhood--families which incidentally increased the value of the
land. Her villa had a decided French look, and was so amazingly trim and
neat and generally shipshape as to be fit--for only the daintiest and
most discriminating feminine occupation. The house was small, and its
metamorphosis from a plain wooden farm-house had been an achievement
that excited general admiration. Porches had been added, and a coat
of spotless white relieved by an orange striping so original that many
envied, but none dared to copy it. The striping went around the white
chimneys, along the cornice, under the windows and on the railings
of the porch: there were window boxes gay with geraniums and abundant
awnings striped white and red, to match the flowers: a high, formal
hemlock hedge hid the house from the road, through which entered a
blue-stone drive that cut the close-cropped lawn and made a circle to
the doorway. Under the great maples on the lawn were a tea-table, rugs,
and wicker chairs, and the house itself was furnished by a variety of
things of a design not to be bought in the United States of America:
desks, photograph frames, writing-sets, clocks, paperknives, flower
baskets, magazine racks, cigarette boxes, and dozens of other articles
for the duplicates of which one might have searched Fifth Avenue in
vain.

Mr. Crewe was a little late. Important matters, he said, had detained
him at the last moment, and he particularly enjoined Mrs. Pomfret's
butler to listen carefully for the telephone, and twice during lunch it
was announced that Mr. Crewe was wanted. At first he was preoccupied,
and answered absently across the table the questions of the Englishman
and the Austrian about American politics, and talked to the