Merton’s first editions went to Sotheby’s, ’Property of a gentleman who is changing his objects of collection.’  A Russian archduke bought Logan’s unique set of golf clubs by Philp.  Funds accrued from other sources.  Logan had a friend, dearer friend had no man, one Trevor, a pleasant bachelor whose sister kept house for him.  His purse, or rather his cheque book, gaped with desire to be at Logan’s service, but had gaped in vain.  Finding Logan grinning one day over the advertisement columns of a paper at the club, his prophetic soul discerned a good thing, and he wormed it out ‘in dern privacy.’  He slapped his manly thigh and insisted on being in it—­as a capitalist.  The other stoutly resisted, but was overcome.

’You need an office, you need retaining fees, you need outfits for the accomplices, and it is a legitimate investment.  I’ll take interest and risks,’ said Trevor.

So the money was found.

The inaugural dinner, for the engaging of accomplices, was given in a private room of a restaurant in Pall Mall.

The dinner was gay, but a little pathetic.  Neatness, rather than the gloss of novelty (though other gloss there was), characterised the garments of the men.  The toilettes of the women were modest; that amount of praise (and it is a good deal) they deserved.  A young lady, Miss Maskelyne, an amber-hued beauty, who practically lived as a female jester at the houses of the great, shone resplendent, indeed, but magnificence of apparel was demanded by her profession.

‘I am so tired of it,’ she said to Merton.  ’Fancy being more and more anxious for country house invitations.  Fancy an artist’s feelings, when she knows she has not been a success.  And then when the woman of the house detests you!  She often does.  And when they ask you to give your imitation of So-and-so, and forget that his niece is in the room!  Do you know what they would have called people like me a hundred years ago?  Toad-eaters!  There is one of us in an old novel I read a bit of once.  She goes about, an old maid, to houses.  Once she arrived in a snow storm and a hearse.  Am I to come to that?  I keep learning new drawing-room tricks.  And when you fall ill, as I did at Eckford, and you can’t leave, and you think they are tired to death of you!  Oh, it is I who am tired, and time passes, and one grows old.  I am a hag!’

Merton said ‘what he ought to have said,’ and what, indeed, was true.  He was afraid she would tell him what she owed her dress-makers.  Therefore he steered the talk round to sport, then to the Highlands, then to Knoydart, then to Alastair Macdonald of Craigiecorrichan, and then Merton knew, by a tone in the voice, a drop of the eyelashes, that Miss Maskelyne was—­vaccinated.  Prophylactic measures had been taken:  this agent ran no risk of infection.  There was Alastair.

Merton turned to Miss Willoughby, on his left.  She was tall, dark, handsome, but a little faded, and not plump:  few of the faces round the table were plump and well liking.  Miss Willoughby, in fact, dwelt in one room, in Bloomsbury, and dined on cocoa and bread and butter.  These were for her the rewards of the Higher Education.  She lived by copying crabbed manuscripts.