imagination.
But it was eminently respectable, and in its way imposing.
It seemed to say that the glittering shops of the jewelers, the
milliners,
the confectioners, the florists, the picture-dealers, the
furriers,
the makers of rare and costly antiquities, retail traders in
luxuries of life, were beneath the notice of a house that had its

foundations in the high finance, and was built literally and
figuratively
in the shadow of St. Petronius' Church.

At the same time there was something self-pleased and
congratulatory in
the way in which the mansion held its own amid the changing
neighborhood.
It almost seemed to be lifted up a little, among the tall
buildings
near at hand, as if it felt the rising value of the land on which
it stood.

John Weightman was like the house into which he had built himself

thirty years ago, and in which his ideals and ambitions were
incrusted.
He was a self-made man. But in making himself he had chosen a
highly esteemed pattern and worked according to the approved
rules.
There was nothing irregular, questionable, flamboyant about him.