never want any
return in kind. It is quite enough for them to be allowed to spend their
money _upon us._'

The house was gorgeous in all the glory of the very latest fashions in
upholstery; hall Algerian; dining-room Pompeian; drawing-room Early
Italian; music-room Louis Quatorze; billiard-room mediaeval English. The
dinner was as magnificent as dinner can be made. Three-fourths of the
guests were the _haute gomme_ of the financial world, and perspired
gold. The other third belonged to a class which Mr. Smithson described
somewhat contemptuously as the shake-back nobility. An Irish peer, a
younger son of a ducal house that had run to seed, a political agitator,
a grass widow whose titled husband was governor of an obscure colony, an
ancient dowager with hair which was too luxuriant to be anything but a
wig, and diamonds which were so large as to suggest paste.

Lesbia sat by her affianced at the glittering table, lighted with
clusters of wax candles, which shone upon a level _parterre_ of tea
roses, gardenias, and gloire de Malmaison carnations; from which rose at
intervals groups of silver-gilt dolphins, supporting shallow golden
dishes piled with peaches, grapes, and all the costliest produce of
Covent Garden.

Conversation was not particularly brilliant, nor had the guests an
elated air. The thermometer was near eighty, and at this period of the
season everybody was tired of this kind of dinner, and would gladly have
foregone the greatest achievements of culinary art, in favour of a
chicken and a salad, eaten under green leaves, in a garden at Wargrave
or Henley, within sound of the rippling river.

On Lesbia's right hand there was a portly personage of Jewish type, dark
to swarthiness, and somewhat oily, whose every word suggested bullion.
He and Mr. Smithson were evidently acquaintances of long standing, and
Mr. Smithson presented him to Lesbia, whereupon he joined in their
conversation now and then.

His talk was of the usual standard. He had seen everything worth seeing
in London and in Paris, between which cities he seemed to oscillate with
such frequency that he might be said to live in both places at once. He
had his stall at Covent Garden, and his stall at the Grand Opera. He was
a subscriber at the Theatre Francais. He had seen all the races at
Longchamps and Chantilly, as well as at Sandown and Ascot. But every now
and then he and Mr. Smithson drifted from the customary talk about
operas and races, pi