"And you've done all this in six weeks? It's incredible."
"Money can do anything, Jim," she cried under her breath. "It's the fairy queen of our childhood and the God of our ancient faith come down to earth. You really like my banquet hall?"
"More than I can tell you."
Nan looked at him keenly.
"The world will say to-morrow morning that I have given this lavish entertainment for vulgar display. In a sense it's true. I am trying to eclipse in splendour anything New York has seen. But I count the fortune it cost well spent to have seen the smile on your face when you looked at that painting of our old hills. I would have given five times as much at any moment the past ten years to have known that you didn't hate me."
"You know it now."
"Yes," she answered tenderly. "You have said so with your lips before, now you mean it. You are your old handsome self to-night."
Apart from the charm of Nan's presence Stuart found the dinner itself a stupid affair, so solemnly stupid it at last became funny. In all the magnificently dressed crowd he looked in vain for a man or woman of real intellectual distinction. He saw only money, money, money!
There was one exception—the titled degenerates from the Old World, hovering around the richest and silliest women, their eyes glittering with eager avarice for a chance at their millions. It seemed a joke that any sane American mother could conceive the idea of selling her daughter to these wretches in exchange for the empty sham of a worm-eaten dishonoured title. And yet it had become so common that the drain on the national resources from this cause constitutes a menace to our future.
In spite of the low murmurs of Nan's beautifully modulated voice in his ears, he found his anger slowly rising, not against any one in particular, but against the vulgar ostentation in which these people moved and the vapid assumption of superiority with which they evidently looked out upon the world.