She still wore moire-antique dresses and gold chains; and if the
dresses were of more simple fashion, and the chains were less
obtrusively displayed, she had to thank Mr. Sheldon for the refinement
in her taste. Her views of life in general had expanded under Mr.
Sheldon's influence. She no longer thought a high-wheeled dog-cart and
a skittish mare the acme of earthly splendour; for she had a carriage
and pair at her service, and a smart little page-boy to leap off the
box in attendance on her when she paid visits or went shopping. Instead
of the big comfortable old-fashioned farmhouse at Hyley, with its
mysterious passages and impenetrable obscurities in the way of
cupboards, she occupied an intensely new detached villa in Bayswater,
in which the eye that might chance to grow weary of sunshine and
glitter would have sought in vain for a dark corner wherein to repose
itself.
Mr. Sheldon's fortunes had prospered since his marriage with his
friend's widow. For a man of his practical mind and energetic
temperament, eighteen thousand pounds was a strong starting-point. His
first step was to clear off all old engagements with Jews and Gentiles,
and to turn his back on the respectable house in Fitzgeorge-street. The
earlier months of his married life he devoted to a pleasant tour on the
Continent; not wasting time in picturesque by-ways, or dawdling among
inaccessible mountains, or mooning about drowsy old cathedrals, where
there were pictures with curtains hanging before them, and prowling
vergers who expected money for drawing aside the curtains; but rattling
at the highest continental speed from one big commercial city to
another, and rubbing off the rust of Bloomsbury in the exchanges and on
the quays of the busiest places in Europe.
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