Silas P. Ratcliffe.
Chapter III
MRS. Lee soon became popular. Her parlour was a favourite haunt
of certain men and women who had the art of finding its mistress
at home; an art which seemed not to be within the powers of
everybody. Carrington was apt to be there more often than any one
else, so that he was looked on as almost a part of the family, and if
Madeleine wanted a book from the library, or an extra man at her
dinner-table, Carrington was pretty certain to help her to the one or
the other. Old Baron Jacobi, the Bulgarian minister, fell madly in
love with both sisters, as he commonly did with every pretty face
and neat figure. He was a witty, cynical, broken-down Parisian
rou?, kept in Washington for years past by his debts and his
salary; always grumbling because there was no opera, and
mysteriously disappearing on visits to New York; a voracious
devourer of French and German literature, especially of novels; a
man who seemed to have met every noted or notorious personage
of the century, and whose mmd was a magazine of amusing
information; an excellent musical critic, who was not afraid to
criticise Sybil's singing; a connoisseur in bric-?-brac, who laughed
at Madeleine's display of odds and ends, and occasionally brought
her a Persian plate or a bit of embroidery, which he said was good
and would do her credit. This old sinner believed in everything
that was perverse and wicked, but he accepted the prejudices of
Anglo-Saxon society, and was too clever to obtrude his opinions
upon others.
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