The banker stood leaning against the mantelshelf, which was draped with an old embroidery held in place by brass candelabra containing church candies of yellowish wax.  He had thrust his chest out, supporting his shoulders against the mantel and resting his weight on one large patent-leather foot.  As Archer entered he was smiling and looking down on his hostess, who sat on a sofa placed at right angles to the chimney.  A table banked with flowers formed a screen behind it, and against the orchids and azaleas which the young man recognised as tributes from the Beaufort hot-houses, Madame Olenska sat half-reclined, her head propped on a hand and her wide sleeve leaving the arm bare to the elbow.

It was usual for ladies who received in the evenings to wear what were called “simple dinner dresses”:  a close-fitting armour of whale-boned silk, slightly open in the neck, with lace ruffles filling in the crack, and tight sleeves with a flounce uncovering just enough wrist to show an Etruscan gold bracelet or a velvet band.  But Madame Olenska, heedless of tradition, was attired in a long robe of red velvet bordered about the chin and down the front with glossy black fur.  Archer remembered, on his last visit to Paris, seeing a portrait by the new painter, Carolus Duran, whose pictures were the sensation of the Salon, in which the lady wore one of these bold sheath-like robes with her chin nestling in fur.  There was something perverse and provocative in the notion of fur worn in the evening in a heated drawing-room, and in the combination of a muffled throat and bare arms; but the effect was undeniably pleasing.

“Lord love us—­three whole days at Skuytercliff!” Beaufort was saying in his loud sneering voice as Archer entered.  “You’d better take all your furs, and a hot-water-bottle.”

“Why?  Is the house so cold?” she asked, holding out her left hand to Archer in a way mysteriously suggesting that she expected him to kiss it.

“No; but the missus is,” said Beaufort, nodding carelessly to the young man.

“But I thought her so kind.  She came herself to invite me.  Granny says I must certainly go.”

“Granny would, of course.  And I say it’s a shame you’re going to miss the little oyster supper I’d planned for you at Delmonico’s next Sunday, with Campanini and Scalchi and a lot of jolly people.”

She looked doubtfully from the banker to Archer.

“Ah—­that does tempt me!  Except the other evening at Mrs. Struthers’s I’ve not met a single artist since I’ve been here.”

“What kind of artists?  I know one or two painters, very good fellows, that I could bring to see you if you’d allow me,” said Archer boldly.

“Painters?  Are there painters in New York?” asked Beaufort, in a tone implying that there could be none since he did not buy their pictures; and Madame Olenska said to Archer, with her grave smile:  “That would be charming.  But I was really thinking of dramatic artists, singers, actors, musicians.  My husband’s house was always full of them.”