Great and sudden wealth, however, if combined with obscure antecedents and questionable qualifications, was still looked upon askance.  In spite of the fact that Adolf Scherer had “put us on the map,” the family of the great iron-master still remained outside of the social pale.  He himself might have entered had it not been for his wife, who was supposed to be “queer,” who remained at home in her house opposite Gallatin Park and made little German cakes,—­a huge house which an unknown architect had taken unusual pains to make pretentious and hideous, for it was Rhenish, Moorish and Victorian by turns.  Its geometric grounds matched those of the park, itself a monument to bad taste in landscape.  The neighbourhood was highly respectable, and inhabited by families of German extraction.  There were two flaxen-haired daughters who had just graduated from an expensive boarding-school in New York, where they had received the polish needful for future careers.  But the careers were not forthcoming.

I was thrown constantly with Adolf Scherer; I had earned his gratitude, I had become necessary to him.  But after the great coup whereby he had fulfilled Mr. Watling’s prophecy and become the chief factor in our business world he began to show signs of discontent, of an irritability that seemed foreign to his character, and that puzzled me.  One day, however, I stumbled upon the cause of this fermentation, to wonder that I had not discovered it before.  In many ways Adolf Scherer was a child.  We were sitting in the Boyne Club.

“Money—­yes!” he exclaimed, apropos of some demand made upon him by a charitable society.  “They come to me for my money—­there is always Scherer, they say.  He will make up the deficit in the hospitals.  But what is it they do for me?  Nothing.  Do they invite me to their houses, to their parties?”

This was what he wanted, then,—­social recognition.  I said nothing, but I saw my opportunity:  I had the clew, now, to a certain attitude he had adopted of late toward me, an attitude of reproach; as though, in return for his many favours to me, there were something I had left undone.  And when I went home I asked Maude to call on Mrs. Scherer.

“On Mrs. Scherer!” she repeated.

“Yes, I want you to invite them to dinner.”  The proposal seemed to take away her breath.  “I owe her husband a great deal, and I think he feels hurt that the wives of the men he knows down town haven’t taken up his family.”  I felt that it would not be wise, with Maude, to announce my rather amazing discovery of the iron-master’s social ambitions.

“But, Hugh, they must be very happy, they have their friends.  And after all this time wouldn’t it seem like an intrusion?”

“I don’t think so,” I said, “I’m sure it would please him, and them.  You know how kind he’s been to us, how he sent us East in his private car last year.”

“Of course I’ll go if you wish it, if you’re sure they feel that way.”  She did make the call, that very week, and somewhat to my surprise reported that she liked Mrs. Scherer and the daughters:  Maude’s likes and dislikes, needless to say, were not governed by matters of policy.