Ah, the quaint goals of the human! It is ever the itching folly of the young to appear older; of the old to appear younger.
And the exceeding great beauty that faced the girl in the mirrored world before her troubled her not at all. She was very, very young.
So she turned on dainty heel and called a hansom—to drive her to the elaborate mansion of Mr. Pompey Malahide, who had his gorgeous dwelling amidst the rich who pay extortionately for life in Park Lane. She shrewdly paid this, to her, heavy toll upon her resources, for she knew, her instincts revealed, what stupid people arrive at by mere mathematics and the rebuffs of experience, that a man respects a woman who has the air of rising, Venus-like, armed at all points from a sea of band-boxes.
Indeed, the girl’s manner and appearance, following upon the weighty pronouncement of Doome’s introduction, dazzled the city man, who rose to meet her, on her announcement by the elaborate footman. Mr. Pompey Malahide had intended to interview her seated at his desk; but a certain distinction and that air aloof and apart and of another world that baffled him in Doome, baffled him now. He stood up with the sudden and unforeseen intention of trying to be a gentleman. From lack of habit, he missed the trick, and at once fell into the first position for taking an order, and became the deferential shopman.
And, to give him his due, his own dignities, or the crudities that passed with him for such, were banished as at a stroke out of his kindly bulk by the ambition which leaped within him that this winsome young woman might transfer something of her gracious bearing and pretty voice to his own two buxom daughters. The very hope of it set his thick blood sounding bassoon notes of delight in his ears, and the proud vision of it went whirling through his emotions. It were as though he had secured an estimate, and could have the work done at a price.
From the moment the girl entered the room she was sure of the post.
To her astonishment, she found the man vulgar; yet almost his first comment had a strange note of good-taste that as much surprised her:
“Miss Modeyne,” said he, “that Mr. Bartholomew Doome should recommend you is alone good enough for me.... But”—he hesitated, a little embarrassed, and added with an effort—“I’m a rough man, and I hope I don’t make you misunderstand me, but I have two girls, and I want you to be with them and leaven them with your pretty ways; and if you will allow me to do it in my own way, I would rather you did not enter this house as a companion or a governess, for the girls would—take—well, they would take the wrong way with you. If you would enter my house as the daughter of a friend of friends of mine, come for a long visit, I would pay you your fees without its being known to them or anyone, and I think you yourself would be in a better and pleasanter position.”
Betty thought over the scheme for a while; her strict code of honour made her consider only the other value—of what she was giving in return.
“Yes,” she said—“perhaps it would be best.... May I see the—girls, first?”