s the tattle of the town
that the first owner of the pictures in the gallery of the Stott mansion
used to tell the prices to his visitors; the third owner is quite beyond
remembering them. He might mention, laughingly, that the ornamented
shovel in the great fireplace in the library was decorated by Vavani--it
was his wife's fancy. But he did not say that the ceiling in the
music-room was painted by Pontifex Lodge, or that six Italian artists had
worked four years making the Corean room, every inch of it exquisite as
an intaglio--indeed, the reporters had made the town familiar with the
costly facts.

The present occupants understood quite well the value of a background:
the house swarmed with servants--retainers, one might say. Margaret, who
was fresh from her history class, recalled the days of Elizabeth, when a
man's importance was gauged by the retinue of servitors and men and women
in waiting. And this is, after all, a better test of wealth than a mere
accumulation of things and cost of decoration; for though men and women
do not cost so much originally as good pictures--that is, good men and
women--everybody knows that it needs more revenue to maintain them.
Though the dinner party was not large, there was to be a dance
afterwards, and for every guest was provided a special attendant.

The dinner was served in the state dining-room, to which Mr. Henderson
had the honor of conducting Margaret. Here prevailed also the same
studied simplicity. The seats were for sixteen. The table went to the
extremity of elegant plainness, no crowding, no confusion of colors under
the soft lights; if there was ostentation anywhere, it was in the
dazzling fineness of the expanse of table-linen, not in the few rare
flowers, or the crystal, or the plate, which was of solid gold, simply
modest. The eye is pleased by this chastity--pure whiteness, the glow of
yellow, the slight touch of sensuous warmth in the rose. The dinner was
in keeping, short, noiselessly served under the eye of the maitre
d'hotel, few courses, few wines; no anxiety on the part of the host and
hostess--perhaps just a little consciousness that everything was simple
and elegant, a little consciousness of the background; but another
generation will remove that.

If to Margaret's country apprehension the conversation was not quite up
to the level of the dinner and the house--what except that of a circle of
wits, who would be out of place there, could be?--the presence