"Oh, as an objet d'art...!"
Bulstrode took the young man in: his white immaculateness, his boutonnière, his panama—(not less than forty dollars a straw, as Jimmy knew) his monocle.
"As an objet d'art," he further conceded to her, "he's perfect, too!"
"As an homme de race," said the American lady eagerly, with the true Republican appreciation of blood and title, "as an homme du monde, as a..."
"Title?" he finished for her. "Oh, the Presle-Vaulx are all right! I'll grant him a perfect title, sound as a bell, first Crusade—Léonce de Presle-Vaulx main droite, or sur azur—Pour toi seule. It's a good old tradition—a good old name."
She scented his lack of sympathy. "Oh, I'll stand for him, Jimmy. I know the pâte, as they say. I know the ring and the tone; and you must, at my valuation, take him."
"Molly, dear lady, has done the taking." Bulstrode lifted his hat as the trio came up. "And what, after all, can we—the rest of us do?"
"The rest of them" watched the young couple with mingled emotions: Mary Falconer with all the romance in her, and in spite of unusual cool reasonableness she had a feminine share—Jimmy with the sympathy of a kindly nature, a certain sting of jealousy at the decidedly perfect completeness of young love, and with a singularly wide-awake practical common sense for an impulsive gentleman whose pleasure in life is to pour into people's hands the things they most long for and cannot without him ever hope to enjoy!
Bulstrode, although owning his share of horse-flesh and a proper number of automobiles and keeping, for the best part of the time, a yacht out of commission, was a sport only in a certain sense of the word. The people who liked him best and who were themselves able to judge, said he was a "dead game sport," but Jimmy smiled at this and knew that the human element interested him in life above all, and that he only cared for amusements as they helped others to enjoy. He was backing Falconer's horse, although he felt certain the winnings would go to the Rothschild's gelding. On the afternoon, however, when De Presle-Vaulx came up to him in the Casino and said: "On what are you going to put your money, Monsieur?" Bulstrode looked at him thoughtfully. He had stood by the young man the night before at baccarat and seen him lose enough to keep a little family of Trouville fisherfolk for a year.
"Are you going to play the races, Marquis?"