“Well, I confess his family won’t compare with hers. There’s a grandfather in it somewhere that was a banker or a brewer or a soap boiler, or something of the sort, and she and her people have been earls and marquises ever since they walked arm in arm out of the ark. But, bless you! all that’s been changed since I came to town. So long as there’s plenty of money and the mind to spend it, we have learned not to be exclusive. It’s selfish that. It’s not Christian. Everything lies in the mind to spend it though. Mrs Tredger-- that’s our lady’s-maid--only this is a secret--says it’s all settled--she knows it for certain fact--only there’s nothing to be said about it yet--she’s so young, you know.” “Who was the man that sat nearly opposite my lady, on the other side of the table?” asked Malcolm. “I know who you mean. Didn’t look as if he’d got any business there --not like the rest of them, did he? No, they never do. Odd and end sort of people like he is, never do look the right thing-- let them try ever so hard. How can they when they ain’t it? That’s a fellow that’s painting Lady Lossie’s portrait! Why he should be asked to dinner for that, I’m sure I can’t tell. He ain’t paid for it in victuals, is he? I never saw such land leapers let into Lossie House, _I_ know! But London’s an awful place. There’s no such a thing as respect of persons here. Here you meet the butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker, any night in my lady’s drawing-room. I declare to _you_, Mawlcolm MacPhail, it makes me quite uncomfortable at times to think who I may have been waiting upon without knowing it. For that painter-fellow, Lenorme they call him, I could knock him on the teeth with the dish every time I hold it to him. And to see him stare at Lady Lossie as he does!” “A painter must want to get a right good hold of the face he’s got to paint,” said Malcolm. “Is he here often?” “He’s been here five or six times already,” answered Wallis, “and how many times more I may have to fill his glass, I don’t know. _I_ always give him second-best sherry, _I_ know. I’m sure the time that pictur’s been on hand! He ought to be ashamed of himself. If she’s been once to his studio, she’s been twenty times--to give him sittings, as they call it. He’s making a pretty penny of it, I’ll be bound! I wonder he has the cheek to show himself when my lady treats him so haughtily. But those sort of people have no proper feelin’s, you see: it’s not to be expected of such.” Wallis liked the sound of his own sentences, and a great deal more talk of similar character followed before they got back from the tailor’s. Malcolm was tired enough of him, and never felt the difference between man and man more strongly than when, after leaving him, he set out for a walk with Blue Peter, whom he found waiting him at his lodging. On this same Blue Peter, however, Wallis would have looked down from the height of his share of the marquisate as one of the lower orders--ignorant, vulgar, even dirty.