‘Dresden china incarnate!’ exclaimed Smithson, as he welcomed Lady Lesbia on the threshold of his marble hall, under the glass marquise which sheltered arrivals at his door.  ’Why do you make yourself so lovely?  I shall want to keep you in one of my Louis Seize cabinets, with the rest of my Dresden!’

Lady Kirkbank had considered the occasion suitable for one of her favourite cotton frocks and rustic hats—­a Leghorn hat, with clusters Of dog-roses and honeysuckle, and a trail of the same hedge-flowers to fasten her muslin fichu.

Mr. Smithson’s house in Park Lane was simply perfect.  It is wonderful what good use a parvenu can make of his money nowadays, and how rarely he disgraces himself by any marked offences against good taste.  There are so many people at hand to teach the parvenu how to furnish his house, or how to choose his stud.  If he go wrong it must be by sheer perversity, an arrogant insistence upon being governed by his own ignorant inclinations.

Mr. Smithson was too good a tactician to go wrong in this way.  He had taken the trouble to study the market before he went out to buy his goods.  He knew that taste and knowledge were to be bought just as easily as chairs and tables, and he went to the right shop.  He employed a clever Scotchman, an artist in domestic furniture, to plan his house, and make drawings for the decoration and furniture of every room—­and for six months he gave himself up to the task of furnishing.

Money was spent like water.  Painters, decorators, cabinet-makers had a merry time of it.  Royal Academicians were impressed into the service by large offers, and the final result of Mr. MacWalter’s taste and Mr. Smithson’s bullion was a palace in the style of the Italian Renaissance, frescoed ceilings, painted panels, a staircase of sculptured marble, as beautiful as a dream, a conservatory as exquisite as a jewel casket by Benvenuto Cellini, a picture gallery which was the admiration of all London, and of the enlightened foreigner, and of the inquiring American.  This was the house which Lesbia had been brought to see, and through which she walked with the calmly critical air of a person who had seen so many palaces that one more or less could make no difference.

In vain did Mr. Smithson peruse her countenance in the hope of seeing that she was impressed by the splendour of his surroundings, and by the power of the man who commanded such splendour.  Lesbia was as cold as the Italian sculptor’s Reading Girl in an alcove of Mr. Smithson’s picture gallery; and the stockbroker felt very much as Aladdin might have done if the fair Badroulbadour had shown herself indifferent to the hall of the jewelled windows, in that magical palace which sprang into being in a single night.

Lesbia had been impressed by that story of poor Belle Trinder and by Lady Kirkbank’s broad assertion that half the young women in London were running after Mr. Smithson; and she had made up her mind to treat the man with supreme scorn.  She did not want his houses or his yachts.  Nothing could induce her to marry such a man, she told herself; but her vanity fed upon the idea of his subjugation, and her pride was gratified by the sense of her power over him.