Their dinners were beyond praise; the wine was incomparable; but their evenings were a little frigid. A sense of cold splendour filled the house—the child which belongs to new things and to new men.
The new man thirty years ago was loud, ostentatious, and vulgar. The new man now—there are a great many more of them—is very often quiet, unpretending, and well-bred. He understands art, and is a patron; he enjoys the advantages which his wealth affords him; he knows how to bear his riches with dignity and with reserve. The only objection to him is that he wants to go where other men, who were new in the last generation, go, and do what they do.
Mr. Cassilis welcomed Miss Fleming and Joseph Jagenal, and resumed his conversation with Jack Dunquerque. That young man looked much the same as when we saw him last on the slopes of the Sierra Nevada. His tall figure had not filled out, but his slight moustache had just a little increased in size. And now he looked a good deal bored.
"I have never, I confess," his host was saying, wielding a double eye-glass instead of his scythe,—"I have never been attracted by the manners and customs of uncivilised people. My sympathies cease, I fear, where Banks end."
"You are only interested in the country of Lombardy?"
"Yes; very good: precisely so."
"Outside the pale of Banks men certainly carry their money about with them——"
"Which prevents the accumulation of wealth, my dear sir. Civilisation was born when men learned to confide in each other. Modern history begins with the Fuggers, of whom you may have read."
"I assure you I never did," said Jack truthfully.
Then dinner was announced.