[97]

V AN ATTEMPT TO DAZZLE

At a quarter past eight the following night Roger drove up to the vast entrance to Red Hill in the buggy he had hired from Burke, the Deer Spring liveryman. Five lackeys in gorgeous livery, with powdered hair and white silk stockings—five strapping fellows with the dumb faces and the stalwart figures the rich select as menial showpieces—appeared in the huge doorway. Three of them advanced to assist Roger. A fourth disappeared—to telephone the stables about this unexpected, humble equipage. The fifth stood upon the threshold, ready to take the hat and coat of the evening’s one guest from without. The moon was high, almost directly above the towers of the great, gray chateau. By the soft, abundant light Roger surveyed the splendid, broad terraces that broke the long and steep descent to Lake Wauchong; the enormous panorama of untouched wilderness covering little mountain, big hill and valley far as the eye could reach—all of it the property of Daniel Richmond. Nearer, in the immediate neighborhood of the house were the elaborations of the[98] skilled landscape gardener. It was indeed a scene of beauty—beauty as well as magnificence—an interesting exhibit of the grandiose style of living wherein the rich sacrifice practically all the joys of life and most of its comforts for the sake of tickling their own vanity and stimulating the envy of their fellow-beings.

At

[98]

As Roger advanced into the lofty, gloomily paneled entrance hall—its carvings had cost a fortune—he drew off his overcoat, disclosing evening dress that would have passed muster on a figure far less in need of ornamentation than his massive yet admirably proportioned frame with its climax of godlike head. And the most impressive feature of that head was the frank simplicity of the expression of the face—that expression which marks the man who is something and lifts him high above the flocks and herds of men who are trying—not too successfully—to seem to be something. The modern evening dress for men is one of the few conventions—perhaps the only one—not designed to bolster up insignificance by reducing all to the same level of smooth elegance. It is one of the curiosities of the history of manners how such a blunder came to be firmly established as a propriety. In evening dress, as in no other kind of costume or lack of costume, the personality, the individuality, of the wearer obtrudes itself to every eye. At a glance one may classify any number of men by[99] their qualities and quantities of head and heart. Beatrice 

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