“Good!” said the beaming Pompey. “My manager will be at my elbow making notes. Don’t take no notice of him. Just you plan the hotel like a lady’s boodywar, in good colour and telling style--the sort o’ thing that pleases the eye so you want to kiss it. Make it _sing_--like a ruddy violin. It’s got to put me in front of Tankerton Wollup. See? Just come in, sir, as if you had a mortgage on the place--don’t mind me--and--well, it’ll be a bit of All-Right-O! See?... Oh,” he added, growing suddenly serious--“look here, Mr. Doome--you see--my boy’s at Harrow, so he’s all safe from me, bless the lad; but--my girls are springing up--rising sixteen one of ’em--and--they are fine stylish girls, too--but--sometimes--I have my qualms that I rub them on the raw a bit. Now, you might give me a hint--now and again--if I--well--_you_ know! Just say: Malahide, my boy, you’re on the vulgar side, see?” “Off side, eh?” “That’s it.” Doome laughed: “You’ll be a baronet yet,” said he. CHAPTER XIV _Which has to do with the Fascination of Naughtiness_ Doome’s studio became the talk of the town. Who, that is Who, has not sat therein? It came to be a part of the great Social Function to have the entrance to this handsome room. The rich tapestries that hung the walls, the glowing colour and the beauty of the furnishments were held in restraint by the chastening, somewhat religious, atmosphere that made the whisper of wickedness add such a mysterious charm to his habitation as it did to the attraction of the dark-souled mysterious Doome himself. No one knew a single vice against the slender handsome youth of the pale classic features and the black hair and immaculate dress; but it was said that things were said. And he was too charmingly delightful--and just a little alarming. Thus gossip wagged an artful tongue. Dingy-looking weak-eyed journalists of the inferior press sneered in unsigned paragraphs of rancid English at his effeminacy, hinting at unmentionable sins--who, had he struck them, would have thought a horse had kicked them--he, whose only agony was that they should belittle him with their praise. Rude sporting men, that passed their virile lives gazing at horses galloping, said he wanted kicking. None kicked him. Perhaps the great church candlesticks that rose in massive wrought brass from the dark stained floor at the ends and by the sides of the large room, holding aloft enormous candles half way to the high ceiling, struck the religious note. Or it may have been the exquisitely rich image of the Mary which stood on the mantel amongst the glowing splendid nudes. But the yawning accents of the most garrulous society babbler sank to a whisper on entrance. Nay, the most brilliant rakes had been known to lower their strutting voices on coming into this room. The faculty of reverence lies dormant in the cynic as in the fool.