We went forth, together, passing from room to room through the great country mansion. The place was handsome, of rather modern type, furnished glaringly in the manner which bespoke the parvenu. It possessed no mellow, time-worn appearance, as did the dear old Manor House beside the Severn. The furniture and hangings were too apparently of the Tottenham Court Road type, and the art displayed was that of the art furnisher given _carte blanche_ to furnish with the newest and most fashionable fancies in the matter of wallpapers, dadoes, cornices, and art-pottery. There were art-carpets and art-curtains, art-cupboards and art-chairs, art-china and art-chintzes. Art was everywhere in painful enamel and impossible greens. There were pictures, too, but different, indeed, to the long row of noble faces with their ruffles and doublets and their arms painted on shields in the corners that looked down so solemnly in the great hall at Heaton. The pictures in that modern mansion were of the _queue-de-siecle_ French school, daubs by the miscalled impressionists, some being rather too _chic_ to be decent. That a large amount of money had been expended upon the place I could not doubt, but the effect was that of dazzling the gaze by colour, and nowhere seemed there a good, comfortable old-fashioned sitting-room. All the apartments were arranged to please the eye, and not for personal comfort. The house was just the kind that a man suddenly successful in the city might set up in the vain endeavour to develop into a country gentleman; for to become such is the ideal of every silk-hatted business man, whether he trades in stocks or stockings. "That I should be compelled to show you over your own house is, to say the least, very amusing," said Gedge, as we were passing up the grand staircase. "If people were told of this they wouldn't believe it possible." "I myself don't believe what you tell me is possible," I remarked. "But who gave orders for this furniture?" "You did." "And who chose it--approved of the designs, and all that sort of thing?" "You certainly did," he answered. "Some of the ideas were, of course, Mrs Heaton's." "I thought so. I don't believe myself capable of such barbaric taste as those awful blues and greens in the little sitting-room." "The morning-room you mean." "I suppose so. The whole place is like a furniture show-room--this style complete, thirty-five guineas, and so on. You know the sort of thing I mean." He smiled in amusement at my words. "Your friends all admire the place," he remarked. "What friends?" "Sir Charles Stimmel, Mr Larcombe, Lady Fraser, and people of that class." "I never heard of them in all my life. Who are they?" I inquired, interested. "Friends of yours. They visit here often enough. You surely ought to know them. Lady Fraser is your wife's dearest friend."