Mrs. Pomfret, as may have been surmised, was a woman of taste, and her villa at Leith, though small, had added considerably to her reputation for this quality.  Patterson Pomfret had been a gentleman with red cheeks and an income, who incidentally had been satisfied with both.  He had never tried to add to the income, which was large enough to pay the dues of the clubs the lists of which he thought worthy to include his name; large enough to pay hotel bills in London and Paris and at the baths, and to free the servants at country houses; large enough to clothe his wife and himself, and to teach Alice the three essentials of music, French, and deportment.  If that man is notable who has mastered one thing well, Patterson Pomfret was a notable man:  he had mastered the possibilities of his income, and never in any year had he gone beyond it by so much as a sole d vin blanc or a pair of red silk stockings.  When he died, he left a worthy financial successor in his wife.

Mrs. Pomfret, knowing the income, after an exhaustive search decided upon Leith as the place to build her villa.  It must be credited to her foresight that, when she built, she saw the future possibilities of the place.  The proper people had started it.  And it must be credited to her genius that she added to these possibilities of Leith by bringing to it such families as she thought worthy to live in the neighbourhood —­families which incidentally increased the value of the land.  Her villa had a decided French look, and was so amazingly trim and neat and generally shipshape as to be fit—­for only the daintiest and most discriminating feminine occupation.  The house was small, and its metamorphosis from a plain wooden farm-house had been an achievement that excited general admiration.  Porches had been added, and a coat of spotless white relieved by an orange striping so original that many envied, but none dared to copy it.  The striping went around the white chimneys, along the cornice, under the windows and on the railings of the porch:  there were window boxes gay with geraniums and abundant awnings striped white and red, to match the flowers:  a high, formal hemlock hedge hid the house from the road, through which entered a blue-stone drive that cut the close-cropped lawn and made a circle to the doorway.  Under the great maples on the lawn were a tea-table, rugs, and wicker chairs, and the house itself was furnished by a variety of things of a design not to be bought in the United States of America:  desks, photograph frames, writing-sets, clocks, paperknives, flower baskets, magazine racks, cigarette boxes, and dozens of other articles for the duplicates of which one might have searched Fifth Avenue in vain.