"No one," I thought, "would sit so apart if she hadn't
dreams--and what are her dreams?"

I'd never thought.

And I remember, too, an outburst of scornful description after she had
lunched with a party of women at the Imperial Cosmic Club. She came
round to my rooms on the chance of finding me there, and I gave her
tea. She professed herself tired and cross, and flung herself into my
chair....

"George," she cried, "the Things women are! Do _I_ stink of money?"

"Lunching?" I asked.

She nodded.

"Plutocratic ladies?"

"Yes."

"Oriental type?"

"Oh! Like a burst hareem!... Bragging of possessions.... They feel you.
They feel your clothes, George, to see if they are good!"

I soothed her as well as I could. "They ARE Good aren't they?" I said.

"It's the old pawnshop in their blood," she said, drinking tea; and then
in infinite disgust, "They run their hands over your clothes--they paw
you."

I had a moment of doubt whether perhaps she had not been discovered in
possession of unsuspected forgeries. I don't know. After that my eyes
were quickened, and I began to see for myself women running their hands
over other women's furs, scrutinising their lace, even demanding to
handle jewelry, appraising, envying, testing. They have a kind of
etiquette. The woman who feels says, "What beautiful sables?" "What
lovely lace?" The woman felt admits proudly: "It's Real, you know,"
or disavows pretension modestly and hastily, "It's Rot Good." In
each other's houses they peer at the pictures, handle the selvage of
hangings, look at the bottoms of china....

I wonder if it IS the old pawnshop in the blood.

I doubt if Lady Drew and the Olympians did that sort of thing, but
here I may be only clinging to another of my former illusions about
aristocracy and the State. Perhaps always possessions have been Booty,
and never anywhere has there been such a thing as house and furnishings
native and natural to the women and men who made use of them....

VI

For me, at least, it marked an epoch in my uncle's career when I learnt
one day that he had "shopped" Lady Grove. I realised a fresh, wide,
unpreluded step. He took me by surprise with the sudden change of scale
from such portable possessions as jewels and motor-cars to a stretch of
countryside. The transaction was Napoleonic; he was told of the place;
he said "snap"; there were no preliminary desirings or searchings. Then
he came home and said what he had done. Even my a