Mr. Mitchell might have been any age between sixty and sixty-five, and
had the high spirits and vitality of a boy.
It was impossible to help liking this delightful couple; they fully
deserved their popularity. In the enormous house at Hampstead, arranged
like a country mansion, where they lived, Mr. Mitchell made it the
object of his life to collect Bohemians as other people collect Venetian
glass, from pure love of the material. His wife, with a silly woman's
subtlety, having rather lower ideals--that is to say, a touch of the
very human vulgarity known as social ambition--made use of his
Bohemianism to help her on in her mundane success. This was the
principle of the thing. If things were well done--and they always were
at her house--would not a duke, if he were musical, go anywhere to hear
the greatest tenor in Europe? And would not all the greatest celebrities
go anywhere to meet a duke?
* * * * *
Next the two young Conistons were announced.
Miss Coniston was a thin, amiable, artistic girl, who did tooling in
leather, made her own dresses, recited, and had a pale, good-looking,
too well-dressed, disquieting young brother of twenty-two, who seemed to
be always going out when other people came in, but was rather useful in
society, being musical and very polite.
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