iety. Small pride
would you have, my dear baron, in these rooms, luxurious though they
are, if filled with guests of vulgar exterior and plebeian manners.
It is only in the world in which we move that we find persons who
harmonize, as it were, with the porcelain of Sevres, and these sofas
that might have come from Versailles."

"I own," said Levy, "that I have what some may call a weakness in a
parvenu like myself. I have a love for the beau monde. It is indeed a
pleasure to me when I receive men like your Lordship."

"But why call yourself a parvenu? Though you are contented to honour
the name of Levy, we, in society, all know that you are the son of a
long-descended English peer. Child of love, it is true; but the Graces
smile on those over whose birth Venus presided. Pardon my old-fashioned
mythological similes,--they go so well with these rooms--Louis Quinze."

"Since you have touched on my birth," said Levy, his colour rather
heightening, not with shame, but with pride, "I don't deny that it has
had some effect on my habits and tastes in life. In fact--"

"In fact, own that you would be a miserable man, in spite of all your
wealth, if the young dandies, who throng to your banquets, were to cut
you dead in the streets; if, when your high-stepping horse stopped at
your club, the porter shut the door in your face; if, when you lounged
into the opera-pit, handsome dog that you are, each spendthrift rake
in 'Fop's Alley,' who now waits but the scratch of your pen to endorse
billets doux with the charm that can chain to himself for a month some
nymph of the Ballet, spinning round in a whirlwind of tulle, would
shrink from the touch of your condescending forefinger with more dread
of its contact than a bailiff's tap in the thick of Pall Mall
could inspire; if, reduced to the company of city clerks, parasite
led-captains--"

"Oh, don't go on, my dear Lord," cried Levy, laughing affectedly.
"Impossible though the picture be, it is really appalling. Cut me off
from May Fair and St. James's, and I should go into my strong closet and
hang myself."

"And yet, my dear baron, all this may happen if I have the whim just to
try; all this will happen, unless, ere I leave your house, you concede
the conditions I come here to impose."

"My Lord!" exclaimed Levy, starting up, and pulling down his waistcoat
with nervous passionate fingers, "if you were not under my own roof, I
would--"

"Truce with mock heroics. Sit down, sir,