about the capitulation of the
Ribblevale Steel Company to our clients. But Ralph Hambleton knew of it,
of course.

"That was a pretty good thing you pulled off, Hughie," he said. "I didn't
think you had it in you."

It was rank patronage, of course, yet I was secretly pleased. As the
years went on I was thrown more and more with him, though in boyhood
there had been between us no bond of sympathy. About this time he was
beginning to increase very considerably the Hambleton fortune, and a
little later I became counsel for the Crescent Gas and Electric Company,
in which he had shrewdly gained a controlling interest. Even toward the
colossal game of modern finance his attitude was characteristically that
of the dilettante, of the amateur; he played it, as it were,
contemptuously, even as he had played poker at Harvard, with a cynical
audacity that had a peculiarly disturbing effect upon his companions. He
bluffed, he raised the limit in spite of protests, and when he lost one
always had the feeling that he would ultimately get his money back twice
over. At the conferences in the Boyne Club, which he often attended, his
manner toward Mr. Dickinson and Mr. Scherer and even toward Miller Gorse
was frequently one of thinly veiled amusement at their seriousness. I
often wondered that they did not resent it. But he was a privileged
person.

His cousin, Ham Durrett, whose inheritance was even greater than Ralph's
had been, had also become a privileged person whose comings and goings
and more reputable doings were often recorded in the newspapers. Ham had
attained to what Gene Hollister aptly but inadvertently called
"notoriety": as Ralph wittily remarked, Ham gave to polo and women that
which might have gone into high finance. He spent much of his time in the
East; his conduct there and at home would once have created a black
scandal in our community, but we were gradually leaving our Calvinism
behind us and growing more tolerant: we were ready to Forgive much to
wealth especially if it was inherited. Hostesses lamented the fact that
Ham was "wild," but they asked him to dinners and dances to meet their
daughters.

If some moralist better educated and more far-seeing than Perry Blackwood
(for Perry had become a moralist) had told these hostesses that Hambleton
Durrett was a victim of our new civilization, they would have raised
their eyebrows. They deplored while they coveted. If Ham had been told he
was a victim of any sor