In the stead
of this multitude of the unarrived, she had now the few, the select,
"the best." Of all that band of indigent retainers who had once fed at
her board like the suitors in the halls of Penelope, only Alcee Buisson
still retained his right of entree. He alone had remembered that
ambition hath a knapsack at his back, wherein he puts alms to oblivion,
and he alone had been considerate enough to do what Flavia had expected
of him, and give his name a current value in the world. Then, as
Miss Broadwood put it, "he was her first real one,"--and Flavia, like
Mohammed, could remember her first believer.

"The House of Song," as Miss Broadwood had called it, was the outcome
of Flavia's more exalted strategies. A woman who made less a point of
sympathizing with their delicate organisms, might have sought to plunge
these phosphorescent pieces into the tepid bath of domestic life;
but Flavia's discernment was deeper. This must be a refuge where the
shrinking soul, the sensitive brain, should be unconstrained; where
the caprice of fancy should outweigh the civil code, if necessary. She
considered that this much Arthur owed her; for she, in her turn, had
made concessions. Flavia had, indeed, quite an equipment of epigrams
to the effect that our century creates the iron genii which evolve its
fairy tales: but the fact that her husband's name was annually painted
upon some ten thousand threshing machines in reality contributed very
little to her happiness.

Arthur Hamilton was born and had spent his boyhood in the West Indies,
and physically he had never lost the brand of the tropics. His father,
after inventing the machine which bore his name, had returned to the
States to patent and manufacture it. After leaving college, Arthur had
spent five years ranching in the West and traveling abroad. Upon his
father's death he had returned to Chicago and, to the astonishment of
all his friends, had taken up the business--without any demonstration
of enthusiasm, but with quiet perseverance, marked ability, and amazing
industry. Why or how a self-sufficient, rather ascetic man of thirty,
indifferent in manner, wholly negative in all other personal relations,
should have doggedly wooed and finally married Flavia Malcolm was a
problem that had vexed older heads than Imogen's.

While Imogen was dressing she heard a knock at her door, and a young
woman entered whom she at once recognized as Jemima Broadwood--"Jimmy"
Broadwood she was