servants. G.J. looked
up the narrow well of the staircase. He could vaguely see Concepcion
on high, leaning over the banisters; he thought she was rather
fluffilly dressed, for her.

Concepcion inhabited an upper part in a street largely devoted to the
sale of grand pianos. Her front door was immediately at the top of a
long, straight, narrow stairway; so that whoever opened the door stood
one step higher than the person desiring entrance. Within the abode,
which was fairly spacious, more and more stairs went up and up. "My
motto is," she would say, "'One room, one staircase.'" The life of the
abode was on the busy stairs. She called it also her Alpine Club. She
had made upper-parts in that street popular among the select, and had
therefore caused rents to rise. In the drawing-room she had hung
a horrible enlarged photographic portrait of herself, with a
chocolate-coloured mount, the whole framed in German gilt, and under
it she had inscribed, "Presented to Miss Concepcion Iquist by the
grateful landlords of the neighbourhood as a slight token of esteem
and regard."

She was the only daughter of Iquist's brother, who had had a business
and a palace at Lima. At the age of eighteen, her last surviving
parent being dead, she had come to London and started to keep house
for the bachelor Iquist, who at that very moment, owing to a fortunate
change in the Ministry, had humorously entered the Cabinet. These two
had immediately become "the most talked-of pair in London," London in
this phrase signifying the few thousand people who do talk about
the doings of other people unknown to them and being neither kings,
princes, statesmen, artistes, artists, jockeys, nor poisoners. The
Iquists had led the semi-intelligent, conscious-of-its-audience set
which had ousted the old, quite unintelligent stately-homes-of-England
set from the first place in the curiosity of the everlasting public.
Concepcion had wit. It was stated that she furnished her uncle with
the finest of his _mots_. When Iquist died, of course poor Concepcion
had retired to the upper part, whence, though her position was
naturally weakened, she still took a hand in leading the set.

G.J. had grown friendly and appreciative of her, for the simple reason
that she had singled him out and always tried to please him, even when
taking liberties with him. He liked her because she was different from
her set. She had a masculine mind, whereas many even of the males of
her set