But Netherby’s keen wits were not deceived by the girl’s reservations. He saw full well that she hungered for the slightest news of Noll--hung upon the smallest details. Before Betty left the house, she was the possessor of a letter of introduction to a Mr. Pompey Malahide, in which her family and connections were recited at a length that, had she known it, would have embarrassed her as much as they were destined to overwhelm the great man--a letter in which she was recommended as an excellent friend and companion to the daughters of that rich personage. This letter that she dropped into the post went under cover to a personal friend of Netherby Gomme’s, and bore the address of a certain Bartholomew Doome. CHAPTER XXXI _Wherein a Great Financier is Satisfied with his Bargain_ Betty had dressed herself with elaborate care; yet she stood before a large shop-window and frowned upon herself. She was fretted with a doubt that she looked too young. Ah, the quaint goals of the human! It is ever the itching folly of the young to appear older; of the old to appear younger. And the exceeding great beauty that faced the girl in the mirrored world before her troubled her not at all. She was very, very young. So she turned on dainty heel and called a hansom--to drive her to the elaborate mansion of Mr. Pompey Malahide, who had his gorgeous dwelling amidst the rich who pay extortionately for life in Park Lane. She shrewdly paid this, to her, heavy toll upon her resources, for she knew, her instincts revealed, what stupid people arrive at by mere mathematics and the rebuffs of experience, that a man respects a woman who has the air of rising, Venus-like, armed at all points from a sea of band-boxes. Indeed, the girl’s manner and appearance, following upon the weighty pronouncement of Doome’s introduction, dazzled the city man, who rose to meet her, on her announcement by the elaborate footman. Mr. Pompey Malahide had intended to interview her seated at his desk; but a certain distinction and that air aloof and apart and of another world that baffled him in Doome, baffled him now. He stood up with the sudden and unforeseen intention of trying to be a gentleman. From lack of habit, he missed the trick, and at once fell into the first position for taking an order, and became the deferential shopman. And, to give him his due, his own dignities, or the crudities that passed with him for such, were banished as at a stroke out of his kindly bulk by the ambition which leaped within him that this winsome young woman might transfer something of her gracious bearing and pretty voice to his own two buxom daughters. The very hope of it set his thick blood sounding bassoon notes of delight in his ears, and the proud vision of it went whirling through his emotions. It were as though he had secured an estimate, and could have the work done at a price. From the moment the girl entered the room she was sure of the post.