Hence, too, the prevalent craving for a certain author’s blood could not be gratified at Mrs. Henry Goldsmith’s Chanukah dinner.  Besides, nobody knew where to lay hands upon Edward Armitage, the author in question, whose opprobrious production, Mordecai Josephs, had scandalized West End Judaism.

“Why didn’t he describe our circles?” asked the hostess, an angry fire in her beautiful eyes.  “It would have, at least, corrected the picture.  As it is, the public will fancy that we are all daubed with the same brush:  that we have no thought in life beyond dress, money, and solo whist.”

“He probably painted the life he knew,” said Sidney Graham, in defence.

“Then I am sorry for him,” retorted Mrs. Goldsmith.  “It’s a great pity he had such detestable acquaintances.  Of course, he has cut himself off from the possibility of any better now.”

The wavering flush on her lovely face darkened with disinterested indignation, and her beautiful bosom heaved with judicial grief.

“I should hope so,” put in Miss Cissy Levine, sharply.  She was a pale, bent woman, with spectacles, who believed in the mission of Israel, and wrote domestic novels to prove that she had no sense of humor.  “No one has a right to foul his own nest.  Are there not plenty of subjects for the Jew’s pen without his attacking his own people?  The calumniator of his race should be ostracized from decent society.”

“As according to him there is none,” laughed Graham, “I cannot see where the punishment comes in.”

“Oh, he may say so in that book,” said Mrs. Montagu Samuels, an amiable, loose-thinking lady of florid complexion, who dabbled exasperatingly in her husband’s philanthropic concerns from the vain idea that the wife of a committee-man is a committee-woman.  “But he knows better.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Mr. Montagu Samuels.  “The rascal has only written this to make money.  He knows it’s all exaggeration and distortion; but anything spicy pays now-a-days.”

“As a West Indian merchant he ought to know,” murmured Sidney Graham to his charming cousin, Adelaide Leon.  The girl’s soft eyes twinkled, as she surveyed the serious little city magnate with his placid spouse.  Montagu Samuels was narrow-minded and narrow-chested, and managed to be pompous on a meagre allowance of body.  He was earnest and charitable (except in religious wrangles, when he was earnest and uncharitable), and knew himself a pillar of the community, an exemplar to the drones and sluggards who shirked their share of public burdens and were callous to the dazzlement of communal honors.

“Of course it was written for money, Monty,” his brother, Percy Saville, the stockbroker, reminded him.  “What else do authors write for?  It’s the way they earn their living.”

Strangers found difficulty in understanding the fraternal relation of Percy Saville and Montagu Samuels; and did not readily grasp that Percy Saville was an Anglican version of Pizer Samuels, more in tune with the handsome well-dressed personality it denoted.  Montagu had stuck loyally to his colors, but Pizer had drooped under the burden of carrying his patronymic through the theatrical and artistic circles he favored after business hours.  Of such is the brotherhood of Israel.