When dinner was announced Mr. Belcher was requested to lead Mrs. Talbot to her seat, and was himself placed between his hostess and Mrs. Dillingham.  Mrs. Talbot was a stately, beautiful woman, and bore off her elegant toilet like a queen.  In her walk into the dining-room, her shapely arm rested upon the proprietor’s, and her brilliant eyes looked into his with an expression that flattered to its utmost all the fool there was in him.  There was a little rivalry between the “dear friends;” but the unrestricted widow was more than a match for the circumspect and guarded wife, and Mr. Belcher was delighted to find himself seated side by side with the former.

He had not talked five minutes with Mrs. Dillingham before he knew her.  The exquisite varnish that covered her person and her manners not only revealed, but made beautiful, the gnarled and stained wood beneath.  Underneath the polish he saw the element that allied her with himself.  There was no subject upon which she could not lead or accompany him with brilliant talk, yet he felt that there was a coarse under-current of sympathy by which he could lead her, or she could lead him—­where?

The courtly manners of the table, the orderly courses that came and went as if the domestic administration were some automatic machine, and the exquisite appointments of the board, all exercised a powerful moral influence upon him; and though they did not wholly suppress him, they toned him down, so that he really talked well.  He had a fund of small wit and drollery that was sufficient, at least, for a single dinner; and, as it was quaint and fresh, the guests were not only amused, but pleased.  In the first place, much could be forgiven to the man who owned Palgrave’s Folly.  No small consideration was due to one who, in a quiet country town, had accumulated a million dollars.  A person who had the power to reward attention with grand dinners and splendid receptions was certainly not a person to be treated lightly.

Mr. Tunbridge undertook to talk finance with him, but retired under the laugh raised by Mr. Belcher’s statement that he had been so busy making money that he had had no time to consider questions of finance.  Mr. Schoonmaker and the minister were deep in Bibles, and on referring some question to Mr. Belcher concerning “The Breeches Bible,” received in reply the statement that he had never arrived any nearer a Breeches Bible than a pocket handkerchief with the Lord’s Prayer on it.  Mr. Cavendish simply sat and criticised the rest.  He had never seen anybody yet who knew anything about finance.  The Chamber of Commerce was a set of old women, the Secretary of the Treasury was an ass, and the Chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means was a person he should be unwilling to take as an office-boy.  As for him, he never could see the fun of old Bibles.  If he wanted a Bible he would get a new one.

Each man had his shot, until the conversation fell from the general to the particular, and at last Mr. Belcher found himself engaged in the most delightful conversation of his life with the facile woman at his side.  He could make no approach to her from any quarter without being promptly met.  She was quite as much at home, and quite as graceful, in bandying badinage as in expatiating upon the loveliness of country life and the ritual of her church.