Can you come up to the house and lunch with me
to-day?"

"I'll be glad to," I said, and meant it, for I liked Philip Vantine.

"I'll look for you, then, about one-thirty."

And that is how it happened that, an hour later, I was walking over
toward Washington Square, just above which, on the Avenue, the old
Vantine mansion stood. It was almost the last survival of the old
regime; for the tide of business had long since overflowed from the
neighbouring streets into the Avenue and swept its fashionable folk
far uptown. Tall office and loft buildings had replaced the
brownstone houses; only here and there did some old family hold on,
like a sullen and desperate rear-guard defying the advancing enemy.

Philip Vantine was one of these. He had been born in the house where
he still lived, and declared that he would die there. He had no one
but himself to please in the matter, since he was unmarried and lived
alone, and he mitigated the increasing roar and dust of the
neighbourhood by long absences abroad. It was from one of these that
he had just returned.

I may as well complete this pencil-sketch. Vantine was about fifty
years of age, the possessor of a comfortable fortune, something of a
connoisseur in art matters, a collector of old furniture, a little
eccentric--though now that I have written the word, I find that I
must qualify it, for his only eccentricity was that he persisted, in
spite of many temptations, in remaining a bachelor. Marriageable
women had long since ceased to consider him; mothers with maturing
daughters dismissed him with a significant shake of the head. It was
from them that he got the reputation of being an eccentric. But his
reasons for remaining single in no way concerned his lawyers--a
position which our firm had held for many years, and the active work
of which had come gradually into my hands.

It was not very arduous work, consisting for the most part of the
drawing of leases, the collecting of rents, the reinvestment of
funds, and the adjustment of minor differences with tenants--all of
which were left to our discretion. But occasionally it was necessary
to consult our client on some matter of unusual importance, or to get
his signature to some paper, and, at such times, I always enjoyed the
talk which followed the completion of the business; for Vantine was a
good talker, with a knowledge of men and of the world gained by much
travel and by a detached, humourous and penetrating habit o