in different parts of
Europe--had everything reproduced where I couldn't buy outright. I
want to enjoy my money while I'm still young. I didn't care what it
cost to get the proper surroundings. As I said to my architect and to
my staff of artists, I expected to be cheated, but I wanted the goods.
And I got the goods. I'll show you through the house after dinner.
It's on this same scale throughout. And they're putting me together a
country place--same sort of thing." He threw back his little shoulders
and protruded his little chest. "And the joke of it is that the whole
business isn't costing me a cent."

"Not a cent less than half a dozen or a dozen millions," said Presbury.

"Not so much as that--not quite," protested the delightedly sparkling
little general. "But what I meant was that, as fast as these fellows
spend, I go down-town and make. Fact is, I'm a little better off than
I was when I started in to build."

"Well, you didn't get any of MY money," laughed Presbury. "But I
suppose pretty much everybody else in the country must have
contributed."

General Siddall smiled. Mildred wondered whether the points of his
mustache and imperial would crack and break of, if he should touch
them. She noted that his hair was roached absurdly high above the
middle of his forehead and that he was wearing the tallest heels she
had ever seen. She calculated that, with his hair flat and his feet on
the ground, he would hardly come to her shoulder--and she was barely of
woman's medium height. She caught sight of his hands--the square,
stubby hands of a working man; the fingers permanently slightly curved
as by the handle of shovel and pick; the skin shriveled but white with
a ghastly, sickening bleached white, the nails repulsively manicured
into long white curves. "If he should touch me, I'd scream," she
thought. And then she looked at Presbury--and around her at the
evidences of enormous wealth.

The general--she wondered where he had got that title--led her mother
in to dinner, Presbury gave her his arm. On the way he found
opportunity to mutter:

"Lay it on thick! Flatter the fool. You can't offend him. Tell him
he's divinely handsome--a Louis Fourteen, a Napoleon. Praise
everything--napkins, tablecloth, dishes, food. Rave over the wine."

But Mildred could not adopt this obviously excellent advice. She sat
silent and cold, while Presbury and her mother raved and drew out the
general to talk of h