For instance, he wanted to open his art gallery to the public; he said it was good strategy; and Mrs. Mortimer sat upon the suggestion with a shrug of her pretty shoulders. Well, then, couldn't he possibly do something with his great, gilded ball-room? No, he couldn't; and the less in evidence his galleries and his ball-rooms were at present the better his chances with people who, perfectly aware that he possessed them, were very slowly learning to overlook the insolence of the accident that permitted him to possess what they had never known the want of. First of all people must tire of repeating to each other that he was nobody, and that would happen when they wearied of explaining to one another why he was ever asked anywhere. There was time enough for him to offer amusement to people after they had ceased to find amusement in snubbing him; plenty of time in the future for them to lash him to a gallop for their pleasure. In the meanwhile he was doing very well, because he began to appear regularly in the Caithness-Bonnesdel box, and old Peter Caithness was already boring him at the Patroons; which meant that the thrifty old gentleman considered Plank's millions as a possible underpinning for the sagging house of Caithness, of which his pallid daughter Agatha was the sole sustaining caryatid in perspective.
Yes, he was doing well; for that despotic beauty, Sylvia Landis, whose capricious perversity had recently astonished those who remembered her in her first season as a sweet, reasonable, and unspoiled girl, was always friendly with him. That must be looked upon as important, considering Sylvia's unassailable position, and her kinship to the autocratic old lady whose kindly ukase had for generations remained the undisputed law in the social system of Manhattan.
"There is another matter," said Leila Mortimer innocently, as Plank, lingering after a disastrous rubber of bridge with her, her husband, and Agatha Caithness, had followed her into her own apartments to write his cheque for what he owed. "You've driven with me so much and you come here so often and we are seen together so frequently that the clans are sharpening up their dirks for us. And that helps some."
"What!" exclaimed Plank, reddening, and twisting around in his chair.
"Certainly. You didn't suppose I could escape, did you?"
"Escape! What?" demanded Plank, getting redder.
"Escape being talked about, savagely, mercilessly. Can't you see how it helps? Oh dear, are you stupid, Beverly?
"I don't know," replied Plank, staring, "just how stupid I am. If you mean that I'm compromising you--"
"Oh, please! Why do you use back-stairs words? Nobody talks about compromising now; all that went out with New Year's calls and brown-stone stoops."