She extended a strong, flexible hand to Hart, and with the other motioned toward a marble that was slowly emerging from the packing straw.
"Old copy of a Venus, the Syracuse one. It will be great in the hall, won't it?"
"It's ripping!" he exclaimed warmly. "But where did you get that picture?"
"You don't like it?"
"Looks to be pure fake."
"And Simonetti swore he knew the very room where it's hung for over a hundred years."
"Oh, he probably put it there himself!"
"Come into the house and see the other things. I have some splendid chairs."
For an hour they examined the articles she had bought, and the architect was sufficiently approving to satisfy Mrs. Phillips. Neither one had a pure, reticent taste. Both were of the modern barbarian type that admires hungrily and ravishes greedily from the treasure house of the Old World what it can get, what is left to get, piling the spoil helter-skelter into an up-to-date American house. Mediæval, Renaissance, Italian, French, Flemish—it was all one! Between them they would turn Forest Manor into one of those bizarre, corrupt, baroque museums that our lavish plunderers love,—electric-lighted and telephoned, with gilded marble fireplaces, massive bronze candelabra, Persian rugs, Gothic choir stalls, French bronzes—a house of barbarian spoil!
A servant brought in a tray of liquors and cigarettes; they sat in the midst of pictures and stuffs, and sipped and smoked.