H. R by Edwin Lefevre

H. R. sent word to Fleming, _via_ Caspar Weinpusslacher, that he desired to meet about fifty members of the society at the Colossal Restaurant that evening at seven sharp. He then went to Valiquet's. The firm's name was not visible on the facade; only a beautiful bronze clock. Everybody was expected to know that this was Valiquet's, and everybody did, particularly those who could not afford to buy jewels. It had engendered throughout the entire country that familiar form of American snobbery which consists not only of having the best that money can buy, but of telling everybody that the watch or the necklace or the solitaire or the stick-pin came from Valiquet's.

He entered the most beautiful store in the world as though his feet had carried him thither automatically, from force of habit. He looked approvingly, as for the millionth time, at the wide teak boards of the floor and the ornate but beautiful solid-silver ceiling and the cool variegated purple-gray marble columns. He paused by the pearl-counter and stared at the one-hundred-thousand-dollar strings with what you might call an amiable tolerance; it wasn't their fault, poor things!