Well, not so very astounding, if you come to think of it. There was
Lena's money, left her by old Weinberger, her maternal uncle. You've
got to reckon with Lena's money. Not that she, poor soul, ever reckoned
with it; she was absolutely free from that taint, and she couldn't
conceive other people reckoning. Only, instinctively, she knew. She
knew how to hold Hippisley. She knew there were things he couldn't
resist, things like wines and motor cars he could be faithful to. From
the very beginning she built for permanence, for eternity. She took a
house in Avenue Road with a studio for Hippisley in the garden; she
bought a motor car and engaged an inestimable cook. Lena's dinners, in
those years, were exquisite affairs, and she took care to ask the right
people, people who would be useful to Hippisley, dealers whom old
Weinberger had known, and journalists and editors and publishers. And
all his friends and her own; even friends' friends. Her hospitality was
boundless and eccentric, and Hippisley liked that sort of thing. He
thrived in a liberal air, an air of gorgeous spending, though he
sported a supercilious smile at the _fioritura_, the luscious excess of
it.
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