The Man of Property, by John Galsworthy

Chapter 3

In Swithin’s orange and light-blue dining-room, facing the Park, the round table was laid for twelve.

A cut-glass chandelier filled with lighted candles hung like a giant stalactite above its centre, radiating over largegilt-framed mirrors, slabs of marble on the tops of side-tables, and heavy gold chairs with crewel worked seats. Everythingbetokened that love of beauty so deeply implanted in each family which has had its own way to make into Society, out of themore vulgar heart of Nature. Swithin had indeed an impatience of simplicity, a love of ormolu, which had always stamped himamongst his associates as a man of great, if somewhat luxurious taste; and out of the knowledge that no one could possiblyenter his rooms without perceiving him to be a man of wealth, he had derived a solid and prolonged happiness such as perhapsno other circumstance in life had afforded him.

Since his retirement from land agency, a profession deplorable in his estimation, especially as to its auctioneeringdepartment, he had abandoned himself to naturally aristocratic tastes.

The perfect luxury of his latter days had embedded him like a fly in sugar; and his mind, where very little took placefrom morning till night, was the junction of two curiously opposite emotions, a lingering and sturdy satisfaction that hehad made his own way and his own fortune, and a sense that a man of his distinction should never have been allowed to soilhis mind with work.

He stood at the sideboard in a white waistcoat with large gold and onyx buttons, watching his valet screw the necks ofthree champagne bottles deeper into ice-pails. Between the points of his stand-up collar, which — though it hurt him to move