Linnet. Allen Grant

notorious Palmer, who⁠—⁠but there!⁠—⁠you’ve been in the States; you must know all about him.”

      “Not Palmer the murderer!” Florian exclaimed in surprise. “She’s too young for that, surely.”

      “No; not Palmer the murderer,” Miss Beard responded in a very shrill voice with considerable acerbity. “He was at least a gentleman. I can’t say as much for this lady’s husband. She’s the widow of Palmer, the dry-goodsman in Broadway.”

      “Oh, indeed,” Florian cried, deeply interested in this discovery⁠—⁠for it meant much money. “I remember the place well⁠—⁠a palatial building in the Renaissance style at the corner of a street near the junction with Fifth Avenue. These princes of commerce in your Western world represent in our midst to-day the great signiors of the Adriatic who held the gorgeous East in fee, and whose Gothic façades, rich in arch and tracery, still line the long curve of the Grand Canal for us. They are the satraps of finance. The world in our times is ruled once more⁠—⁠as in Venice of old, in the heyday of its splendour⁠—⁠by the signet-ring of the merchant. Palmer was one of these⁠—⁠a paladin of silken bales, a Doge Dandolo of Manhattan, a potentate in the crowded marts of the Samarcand of the Occident.”

      “I don’t know what you mean,” Miss Beard retorted in an acrid tone, eyeing him sternly through her pince-nez, “but I say he was a dry-goodsman.”

      Florian descended at a bound from the open empyrean to the solid earth of commonplace. “Well, at any rate, he was rich,” he said, letting the paladins slide. “He must have died worth millions.”

      “His estate was proved,” Miss Beard said, curtly, “at a sum in dollars which totals out⁠—⁠let me see⁠—⁠fives into 35⁠—⁠ah, yes, to exactly seven hundred and eighty-four thousand pounds sterling.”

      Florian gave a little gasp. “That’ll do,” he said, with slow emphasis. “And he left it?” he suggested, after a second’s pause, with an interrogative raising of his broad white forehead.

      “And he left it, every cent,” Miss Beard responded, “without deduction of any sort, to that fly-away little inanity.”

      Florian drew a deep breath. “Then she’s rich,” he said, musing; “rich beyond the utmost dreams of avarice.”

      “Well, of course she is,” Miss Beard answered, with a sharp little snap, as though every one knew that. “If she wasn’t, could she go tearing about Europe as she does, herself and her maid, buying everything she sees, and making presents right and left⁠—⁠to everyone she comes across. She’d give her own soul away if anybody asked her for it. Little empty-headed fool! She’s not fit to be trusted with the use of money. But, of course, one can’t know her, however rich she may be. We draw the line in the States at keeping shop. And, besides, she was never brought up among cultivated people.”

      As she spoke, Florian noted several things silently to himself. He noted, first, that Mrs. Palmer spoke the English tongue many degrees more correctly, and more pleasantly as well, than her would-be critic. He noted, second, that her very generosity was counted for blame to her by this narrower nature. He noted, third, that in republican America, even more than in monarchical and aristocratic England, Mrs. Palmer’s cleverness, her information, her reading, her culture, were as dust in the balance in Society’s eyes, compared with the damning and indelible fact that her late lamented husband had owned a dry-goods store. But, being a worldly-wise man, Florian noted these things in his own heart alone. Externally, he took no overt notice of them. On the contrary, he continued his talk in the same bland and honey-sweet tone as ever. “Still, she’d be a catch in her way,” he said, with a condescending smile, “for any man who didn’t object to swallow her antecedents.”

      “She would,” Miss Beard replied, with austere self-respect, “if people care to mix in that sort of society. For myself, I’ve been used to a different kind of life. I couldn’t put up with it.”

      Florian was audacious. He posed the one last question he still wished to ask, boldly. “And there’s no awkward clause, I suppose,” he said, without even the apology of a blush, “in her husband’s will, of that nasty so-long-as-my-said-wife-remains-unmarried character?”

      Miss Beard took up her Galignani with crushing coldness. She didn’t care to discuss such people’s prospects from such a standpoint. Their matrimonial affairs were beneath her notice. For fine old crusted prejudice of a social sort, commend me, so far as my poor knowledge goes, to the members of good New Yorker families. “To the best of my knowledge and belief,” she murmured, acridly, without raising her eyes, “the property’s left for her own sole use and benefit, without any restriction. But I’m sure I don’t know. If you want to find out you’d better ask her. I don’t burden my mind with these people’s business.”

      Then Florian knew the Vision of Beauty was a catch not to be despised by a man of culture. Such wealth as that, no gentleman could decline, in justice to himself, if she gave him the refusal of it.