h an air of candor, giving
a very perceptible pressure with her little hands. "Isn't that enough?"

Jack kissed each little hand before he let it drop, and looked as if he
believed.

"And how does the house get on?"

"Famously. The lot is bought. Mr. Van Brunt was here all the morning.
It's going to be something Oriental, mediaeval, nineteenth-century,
gorgeous, and domestic. Van Brunt says he wants it to represent me."

"How?" inquired Jack; "all the four facades different?"

"With an interior unity--all the styles brought to express an individual
taste, don't you know. A different house from the four sides of
approach, and inside, home--that's the idea."

"It appears to me," said Jack, still bantering, "that it will look like
an apartment-house."

"That is just what it will not--that is, outside unity, and inside a
menagerie. This won't look gregarious. It is to have not more than
three stories, perhaps only two. And then exterior color, decoration,
statuary."

"And gold?"

"Not too much--not to give it a cheap gilded look. Oh, I asked him about
Nero's house. As I remember it, that was mostly caverns. Mr. Van Brunt
laughed, and said they were not going to excavate this house. The Roman
notion was barbarous grandeur. But in point of beauty and luxury, this
would be as much superior to Nero's house as the electric light is to a
Roman lamp."

"Not classic, then?"

"Why, all that's good in classic form, with the modern spirit. You ought
to hear Mr. Van Brunt talk. This country has never yet expressed itself
in domestic inhabitation."

"It's going to cost! What does Mr. Henderson say?"

"I think he rather likes it. He told Mr. Van Brunt to consult me and go
ahead with his plans. But he talks queerly. He said he thought he would
have money enough at least for the foundation. Do you think, Jack,"
asked Carmen, with a sudden change of manner, "that Mr. Henderson is
really the richest man in the United States?"

"Some people say so. Really, I don't know how any one can tell. If he
let go his hand from his affairs, I don't know what a panic would do."

Carmen looked thoughtful. "He said to me once that he wasn't afraid of
the Street any more. I told him this morning that I didn't want to begin
this if it was going to incommode him."

"What did he say?"

"He was just going out. He looked at me a moment with that speculative
sort of look-no, it isn't cynical, as you say; I know it so well--and
then said: 'O