The noble Baron de Palliac at this feast of the tribesmen was like the captive patrician of old led in chains that galled. The other alien, Launton Oldaker, was present under terms of honourable truce, willingly and without ulterior motive saving—as he confessed to himself—a consuming desire to see "how the other half lives." He was no longer the hunted and dismayed being Percival had met in that far-off and impossible Montana; but was now untroubled, remembering, it is true, that this "slumming expedition," as he termed it, had taken him beyond the recognised bounds of his beloved New York, but serene in the consciousness that half an hour's drive would land him safely back at his club.
Oldaker observed Miss Psyche Bines approvingly.
"We are so glad to be in New York!" she had confided to him, sitting at her right.
"My dear young woman," he warned her, "you haven't reached New York yet." The talk being general and loud, he ventured further.
"This is Pittsburg, Chicago, Kansas City, Denver—almost anything but New York."
"Of course I know these are not the swell old families."
Oldaker sipped his glass of old Oloroso sherry and discoursed.
"And our prominent families, the ones whose names you read, are not New York any more, either. They are rather London and Paris. Their furniture, clothing, plate, pictures, and servants come from one or the other. Yes, and their manners, too, their interests and sympathies and concerns, their fashions—and—sometimes, their—er—morals. They are assuredly not New York any more than Gobelin tapestries and Fortuny pictures and Louis Seize chairs are New York."
"How queerly you talk. Where is New York, then?"
Oldaker sighed thoughtfully between two spoonfuls of tortue verte, claire.