LITMIR.BIZ

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the monotony of the white, and set off her shapely figure. Her hair, done up in the simplest fashion, was adorned with a single white rose. Her cheeks were a little flushed with excitement, but her eyes were steady.

      Phillis stole a glance at the other ladies. They were dressed, she was glad to observe, in the same style as herself, but not better. That naturally raised her spirits.

      Then Mrs. Cassilis introduced her husband.

      When Phillis next day attempted to reproduce her impressions of the evening, she had no difficulty in recording the likeness of Mr. Gabriel Cassilis with great fidelity. He was exactly like old Time.

      The long lean limbs, the pronounced features, the stooping figure, the forelock which our enemy will not allow us to take, the head, bald save for that single ornamental curl and a fringe of gray hair over the ears – all the attributes of Time were there except the scythe. Perhaps he kept that at his office.

      He was a very rich man. His house was in Kensington Palace Gardens, a fact which speaks volumes; its furnishing was a miracle of modern art; his paintings were undoubted; his portfolios of water-colours were worth many thousands; and his horses were perfect.

      He was a director of many companies – but you cannot live in Kensington Palace Garden by directing companies and he had an office in the City which consisted of three rooms. In the first were four or five clerks, always writing; in the second was the secretary, always writing; in the third was Mr. Gabriel Cassilis himself, always giving audience.

      He married at sixty-three, because he wanted an establishment in his old age. He was too old to expect love from a woman, and too young to fall in love with a girl. He did not marry in order to make a pet of his wife – indeed, he might as well have tried stroking a statue of Minerva as petting Victoria Pengelley; and he made no secret of his motive in proposing for the young lady. As delicately as possible he urged that, though her family was good, her income was small; that it is better to be rich and married than poor and single; and he offered, if she consented to become his wife, to give her all that she could wish for or ask on the material and artistic side of life.

      Victoria Pengelley, on receipt of the offer, which was communicated by a third person, her cousin, behaved very strangely. She first refused absolutely; then she declared that she would have taken the man, but that it was now impossible; then she retracted the last statement, and, after a week of agitation, accepted the offer.

      "And I must say, Victoria," said her cousin, "that you have made a strange fuss about accepting an offer from one of the richest men in London. He is elderly, it is true; but the difference between eight and twenty and sixty lies mostly in the imagination. I will write to Mr. Cassilis to-night."

      Which she did, and they were married.

      She trembled a great deal during the marriage ceremony. Mr. Cassilis was pleased at this appearance of emotion, which he attributed to causes quite remote from any thought in the lady's mind. "Calm to all outward seeming," he said to himself, "Victoria is capable of the deepest passion."

      They had now been married between two and three years. They had one child – a boy.

      It is only to be added that Mr. Cassilis settled the sum of fifteen thousand pounds upon the wedding-day on his wife, and that they lived together in that perfect happiness which is to be expected from well-bred people who marry without pretending to love each other.

      Their dinners were beyond praise; the wine was incomparable; but their evenings were a little frigid. A sense of cold splendour filled the house – the child which belongs to new things and to new men.

      The new man thirty years ago was loud, ostentatious, and vulgar. The new man now – there are a great many more of them – is very often quiet, unpretending, and well-bred. He understands art, and is a patron; he enjoys the advantages which his wealth affords him; he knows how to bear his riches with dignity and with reserve. The only objection to him is that he wants to go where other men, who were new in the last generation, go, and do what they do.

      Mr. Cassilis welcomed Miss Fleming and Joseph Jagenal, and resumed his conversation with Jack Dunquerque. That young man looked much the same as when we saw him last on the slopes of the Sierra Nevada. His tall figure had not filled out, but his slight moustache had just a little increased in size. And now he looked a good deal bored.

      "I have never, I confess," his host was saying, wielding a double eye-glass instead of his scythe, – "I have never been attracted by the manners and customs of uncivilised people. My sympathies cease, I fear, where Banks end."

      "You are only interested in the country of Lombardy?"

      "Yes; very good: precisely so."

      "Outside the pale of Banks men certainly carry their money about with them – "

      "Which prevents the accumulation of wealth, my dear sir. Civilisation was born when men learned to confide in each other. Modern history begins with the Fuggers, of whom you may have read."

      "I assure you I never did," said Jack truthfully.

      Then dinner was announced.

      Phillis found herself on the right of Mr. Cassilis. Next to her sat Captain Ladds. Mr. Dunquerque was at the opposite corner of the table – he had given his arm to Mrs. Cassilis.

      Mrs. Cassilis, Phillis saw, was watching her by occasional glances. The girl felt a little anxious, but she was not awkward. After all, she thought, the customs of society at a dinner-table cannot be very different from those observed and taught her by Mr. Dyson. Perhaps her manner of adjusting things was a little wanting in finish and delicacy – too downright. Also, Mrs. Cassilis observed she made no attempt to talk with Captain Ladds, her neighbour, but was, curiously enough, deeply interested in the conversation of Mr. Cassilis.

      Ladds was too young for Phillis, despite his five and thirty years. Old men and greybeards she knew. Young men she did not know. She could form no guess what line of talk would be adopted by a young man – one who had a deep bass voice when he spoke, and attacked his dinner with a vigour past understanding. Phillis was interested in him, and a little afraid lest he should talk to her.

      Others watched her too. Jack Dunquerque, his view a little intercepted by the épergne, lifted furtive glances at the bright and pretty girl at the other end of the table. Joseph Jagenal looked at her with honest pride in the beauty of his ward.

      They talked politics, but not in the way to which she was accustomed. Mr. Dyson and his brother greybeards were like Cassandra, Elijah, Jeremiah, and a good many prophets of the present day, inasmuch as the more they discussed affairs the more they prophesied disaster. So that Phillis had learned from them to regard the dreadful future with terror. Every day seemed to make these sages more dismal. Phillis had not yet learned that the older we get the wiser we grow, and the wiser we grow the more we tremble; that those are most light-hearted who know the least. At this table, politics were talked in a very different manner; they laughed where the sages wagged their heads and groaned; they even discussed, with a familiarity which seemed to drive out anxiety, the favorite bugbear of her old politicians, the continental supremacy of Germany.

      The two young City men, who were as solemn as a pair of Home Secretaries, listened to their host with an eager interest and deference which the other two, who were not careful about investments, did not imitate. Phillis observed the difference, and wondered what it meant. Then Mr. Cassilis, as if he had communicated as many ideas about Russia as he thought desirable, turned the conversation upon travelling, in the interests of the Dragoon and the younger son.

      "I suppose," he said, addressing Jack, "that in your travels among the islanders you practised the primitive mode of Barter."

      "We did; and they cheated us when they could. Which shows that they have improved upon the primitive man. I suppose he was honest."

      "I should think not," said the host. "The most honest classes in the world are the richest. People who want to get things always have a tendency to be dishonest. England is the most honest nation, because it is the richest. France is the next. Germany, you see, which is a poor country, yielded to the temptations of poverty and took Sleswick-Holstein, Alsace and Lorraine. I believe that men began with dishonesty."

      "Adam,

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