The above is a fair sample of the kind of conversation that one heard whenever one visited any of the Wallings.  Perhaps, as Mrs. Robbie said, it may have been their millions that made necessary their attitude toward other people; certain it was, at any rate, that Montague found them all most disagreeable people to know.  There was always some tempest in a teapot over the latest machinations of their enemies.  And then there was the whole dead mass of people who sponged upon them and toadied to them; and finally the barbarian hordes outside the magic circle of their acquaintance—­some specimens of whom came up every day for ridicule.  They had big feet and false teeth; they ate mush and molasses; they wore ready-made ties; they said:  “Do you wish that I should do it?” Their grandfathers had been butchers and pedlars and other abhorrent things.  Montague tried his best to like the Wallings, because of what they were doing for Alice; but after he had sat at their lunch-table and listened to a conversation such as this, he found himself in need of fresh air.

And then he would begin to wonder about his own relation to these people.  If they talked about every one else behind their backs, certainly they must talk about him behind his.  And why did they go out of their way to make him at home, and why were they spending their money to launch Alice in Society?  In the beginning he had assumed that they did it out of the goodness of their hearts; but now that he had looked into their hearts, he rejected the explanation.  It was not their way to shower princely gifts upon strangers; in general, the attitude of all the Wallings toward a stranger was that of the London hooligan—­“’Eave a ’arf a brick at ’im!” They considered themselves especially appointed by Providence to protect Society from the vulgar newly rich who poured into the city, seeking for notoriety and recognition.  They prided themselves upon this attitude—­they called it their “exclusiveness”; and the exclusiveness of the younger generations of Wallings had become a kind of insanity.

Nor could the reason be that Alice was beautiful and attractive.  One could have imagined it if Mrs. Robbie had been like—­say, Mrs. Winnie Duval.  It was easy to think of Mrs. Winnie taking a fancy to a girl, and spending half her fortune upon her.  But from a hundred little things that he had seen, Montague had come to realize that the Robbie Wallings, with all their wealth and power and grandeur, were actually quite stingy.  While all the world saw them scattering fortunes in their pathway, in reality they were keeping track of every dollar.  And Robbie himself was liable to panic fits of economy, in which he went to the most absurd excesses—­Montague once heard him haggling over fifty cents with a cabman.  Lavish hosts though they both were, it was the literal truth that they never spent money upon anyone but themselves—­the end and aim of their every action was the power and prestige of the Robbie Wallings.