His little eyes appraised her. Despite his many limitations, Benstein had a keen love of the beautiful—qua beautiful. Isa stood before him a vision of loveliness in a dress of green touched here and there with gold. The shaded lights rendered her eyes all the more brilliant.
"Give me a kiss," Benstein said hoarsely. "When you look like that I can refuse you nothing. I am getting into my dotage, men say. Well, perhaps. Good thing some of them can't see me now."
The elaborate dinner proceeded in that perfect Tudor dining-room. Not a single article of furniture was there that lacked historic interest. The old oak and silver were priceless, and every bit of it had been collected under Isa Benstein's own eye. No dealer had ever succeeded in imposing on her.
The silk slips were drawn at length from the polished dark oak with the wonderful red tints in it, so that the nodding flowers were reflected from a lake of thin blood. Here and there the decanters gleamed, a Tudor model of a Spanish galleon mounted on wheels was pushed along the table, its various compartments filled with all kinds of cigarettes.
"No, a Virginian for me," Isa said, as the servants withdrew. The drawing-room was a dream of beauty, but she preferred the dining-room. For restfulness and form and artistic completeness there was no room like the Tudor hall, she declared. "Give me good, honest tobacco."
"How did you get on to-day?" Benstein asked.
"I didn't. I sat and watched the procession. Sir Clement Frobisher came and made himself agreeable to me, and so did his wife—under compulsion. But she asked me to her dance, and I am going."
"Hope that they won't ask me, too," Benstein said uneasily.
"You need not go, in any case; in fact, I'd rather you didn't. I've been scheming out my dress, Aaron; do you happen to be strong in rubies just now?"
Benstein nodded his huge head and smiled. More or less, he had the jewels of the great world in his possession. It was his whim to keep them at home. He trusted nobody, not even a bank. Besides, nearly every day brought something neat and ingenious in the way of a jewel fraud.