“Of course I do,” said he, perplexed.
“Do you know,” was her unexpected response, “I hardly know what to make of you. I’m afraid to trust you, on account of your brother.”
Montague was embarrassed. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said.
“Everybody thinks there’s some trickery in that suit,” she answered.
“Oh,” said Montague, “I see. Well, they will find out. If it will help you any to know it, I’ve been having no end of scenes with my brother.”
“I’ll believe you,” said Mrs. Billy, genially. “But it seems strange that a man could have been so blind to a situation! I feel quite ashamed because I didn’t help you myself!”
The carriage had stopped at Mrs. Billy’s home, and she asked him to dinner. “There’ll be nobody but my brother,” she said,—“we’re resting this evening. And I can make up to you for my negligence!”
Montague had no engagement, and so he went in, and saw Mrs. Billy’s mansion, which was decorated in imitation of a Doge’s palace, and met Mr. “Davy” Alden, a mild-mannered little gentleman who obeyed orders promptly. They had a comfortable dinner of half-a-dozen courses, and then retired to the drawing-room, where Mrs. Billy sank into a huge easy chair, with a decanter of whisky and some cracked ice in readiness beside it. Then from a tray she selected a thick black cigar, and placidly bit off the end and lighted it, and then settled back at her ease, and proceeded to tell Montague about New York, and about the great families who ruled it, and where and how they had got their money, and who were their allies and who their enemies, and what particular skeletons were hidden in each of their closets.
It was worth coming a long way to listen to Mrs. Billy tête-à-tête; her thoughts were vigorous, and her imagery was picturesque. She spoke of old Dan Waterman, and described him as a wild boar rooting chestnuts. He was all right, she said, if you didn’t come under his tree. And Montague asked, “Which is his tree?” and she answered, “Any one he happens to be under at the time.”
And then she came to the Wallings. Mrs. Billy had been in on the inside of that family, and there was nothing she didn’t know about it; and she brought the members up, one by one, and dissected them, and exhibited them for Montague’s benefit. They were typical bourgeois people, she said. They were burghers. They had never shown the least capacity for refinement—they ate and drank, and jostled other people out of the way. The old ones had been boors, and the new ones were cads.