“I am glad to see you here,” said his hostess. “Frederick, you can hardly remember your other nephew, son of Algernon.”
Frederick held out a manly grasp. “When I left England,” he said, “you were a child of four or five; I cannot pretend to remember you, Leonard.”
“Nor can I remember you.” He tried to dismiss from his mind a certain ugly word. “But you are welcome home once more. This time, I hope, to stay.”
“I think not. Affairs—affairs are sometimes peremptory, particularly large affairs. The City may insist upon my staying a few weeks, or the City may allow me to go back. I am wholly in the hands of the City.”
If you come to think of it, a man must be rich indeed to be in the hands of the City.
The people gazed upon the speaker with increased interest, and even awe. They were not in the hands of the City.
“I confess,” he went on, “that I should like to remain. Society, when one returns to it after many years, is pleasing. Some people say that it is hollow. Perhaps. The frocks vary”—he looked round critically—“they are not the same as they were five-and-twenty years ago; but the effect remains the same. And the effect is everything. We must not look behind the scenes. The rough old colonist”—yet no one in the room was better groomed—“looks on from the outside and finds it all delightful.”
“Can things unreal ever be delightful?” murmured a lady in the circle with a sigh.
“At all events,” Leonard continued, “you will not leave us for a time.”
“There, again, I am uncertain. I have a partner in Australia. I have connections to look up in the City. But for a few weeks I believe I may reckon on a holiday and a look round, for Colonials have to show the City that all the enterprise is not theirs, nor all the wealth—nor all the wealth. And what,” he asked with condescension, “what are you doing, Leonard?”