It was just because she was _not_ interesting--if I may be pardoned
the bull--that I found her so. For Jack, all his life, had been
surrounded by interesting women: they had fostered his art, it had
been reared in the hot-house of their adulation. And it was
therefore instructive to note what effect the "deadening atmosphere
of mediocrity" (I quote Miss Croft) was having on him.
I have mentioned that Mrs. Gisburn was rich; and it was immediately
perceptible that her husband was extracting from this circumstance a
delicate but substantial satisfaction. It is, as a rule, the people
who scorn money who get most out of it; and Jack's elegant disdain
of his wife's big balance enabled him, with an appearance of perfect
good-breeding, to transmute it into objects of art and luxury. To
the latter, I must add, he remained relatively indifferent; but he
was buying Renaissance bronzes and eighteenth-century pictures with
a discrimination that bespoke the amplest resources.
"Money's only excuse is to put beauty into circulation," was one of
the axioms he laid down across the Sevres and silver of an
exquisitely appointed luncheon-table, when, on a later day, I had
again run over from Monte Carlo; and Mrs.
Pages:
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229