The arbiter of style smiled pityingly, and admitted that he comprehended his customer.

It was at last arranged that the latter should make a study of the house, and furnish it according to his best ability, within a specified sum of expenditure and a specified period of time; and then the proprietor took his leave.

Mr. Belcher had accomplished a large amount of business within two days, but he had worked according to his habit.  The dinner party remained, and this was the most difficult business that he had ever undertaken, yet he had a strong desire to see how it was done.  He learned quickly what he undertook, and he had already “discounted,” to use his own word, a certain amount of mortification connected with the affair.

CHAPTER IX.

MRS. TALBOT GIVES HER LITTLE DINNER PARTY, AND MR. BELCHER MAKES AN EXCEEDINGLY PLEASANT ACQUAINTANCE.

Mrs. Talbot had a very dear friend.  She had been her dear friend ever since the two had roomed together at boarding-school.  Sometimes she had questioned whether in reality Mrs. Helen Dillingham was her dear friend, or whether the particular friendship was all on the other side; but Mrs. Dillingham had somehow so manipulated the relation as always to appear to be the favored party.  When, therefore, the dinner was determined upon, Mrs. Dillingham’s card of invitation was the first one addressed.  She was a widow and alone.  She complemented Mr. Belcher, who was also alone.

Exactly the position Mrs. Dillingham occupied in society, it would be hard to define.  Everybody invited her, and yet everybody, without any definite reason, considered her a little “off color.”  She was beautiful, she was accomplished, she talked wonderfully well, she was au fait in art, literature, society.  She was superficially religious, and she formed the theater of the struggle of a black angel and a white one, neither of whom ever won a complete victory, or held whatever advantage he gained for any considerable length of time.  Nothing could be finer than Mrs. Dillingham in her fine moods; nothing coarser when the black angel was enjoying one of his victories, and the white angel had sat down to breathe.  It was the impression given in these latter moments that fixed upon her the suspicion that she was not quite what she ought to be.  The flowers bloomed where she walked, but there was dust on them.  The cup she handed to her friends was pure to the eye, but it had a muddy taste.  She was a whole woman in sympathy, power, beauty, and sensibility, and yet one felt that somewhere within she harbored a devil—­a refined devil in its play, a gross one when it had the woman at unresisting advantage.