"The daughter is divine," affirmed Muscari, "the father and son are,
I suppose, human. But granted his harmless qualities doesn't that banker
strike you as a splendid instance of my argument? Harrogate has millions
in his safes, and I have--the hole in my pocket. But you daren't say--
you can't say--that he's cleverer than I, or bolder than I, or even
more energetic. He's not clever, he's got eyes like blue buttons;
he's not energetic, he moves from chair to chair like a paralytic.
He's a conscientious, kindly old blockhead; but he's got money simply
because he collects money, as a boy collects stamps.
You're too strong-minded for business, Ezza. You won't get on.
To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough
to want it."

"I'm stupid enough for that," said Ezza gloomily. "But I should
suggest a suspension of your critique of the banker, for here he comes."

Mr Harrogate, the great financier, did indeed enter the room,
but nobody looked at him. He was a massive elderly man with
a boiled blue eye and faded grey-sandy moustaches; but for
his heavy stoop he might have been a colonel. He carried several
unopened letters in his hand. His son Frank was a really fine lad,
curly-haired, sun-burnt and strenuous; but nobody looked at him either.
All eyes, as usual, were riveted, for the moment at least,
upon Ethel Harrogate, whose golden Greek head and colour of the dawn
seemed set purposely above that sapphire sea, like a goddess's.
The poet Muscari drew a deep breath as if he were drinking something,
as indeed he was. He was drinking the Classic; which his fathers made.
Ezza studied her with a gaze equally intense and far more baffling.

Miss Harrogate was specially radiant and ready for conversation