But Mortimer had become enormous; rolls of flesh crowded his mottled ear-lobes outward and bulged above his collar; cushions of it padded the backs of his hands and fingers; shaving left his heavy, distended face congested and unpleasantly shiny.

But he was as minutely groomed as ever, and he wore that satiated air of prosperity which had always been one of his most important assets.
The social campaign inaugurated by Leila Mortimer in behalf of Beverly Plank had, so far, received no serious reverses.

His box at the horse show, of course, produced merely negative results; his box at the opera might mean something some day.

His name was up at the Lenox and the Patroons; he had endowed a ward in the new pavilion of St.Berold's Hospital; he had presented a fine Gainsborough--The Countess of Wythe--to the Metropolitan Museum; and it was rumoured that he had consulted several bishops concerning a new chapel for that huge bastion of the citadel of Faith looming above the metropolitan wilderness in the north.
So far, so good.

If, as yet, he had not been permitted to go where he wanted to go, he at least had been instructed where not to go and what not to do; and he was as docile as he was dogged, understanding how much longer it takes to shuffle in by way of the mews and the back door than to sit on the front steps and wait politely for somebody to unchain the front door.
Meanwhile he was doggedly docile; his huge house, facing the wintry park midway between the squat palaces of the wealthy pioneers and the outer hundreds, remained magnificently empty save for certain afternoon conferences of very solemn men, fellow directors and associates in business and financial matters--save for the periodical presence of the Mortimers: a mansion immense and shadowy, haunted by relays of yawning, livened servants, half stupefied under the vast silence of the twilit splendour.