Look at 'Materialism', over there." In a wheeled chair, attended by a servant in livery, a little apart from the center of the scene,--as though the pageant of life was about to move on without him,--but still, with desperate grip, holding his place in the picture, sat the genius of it all--the millionaire.

The creature's wasted, skeleton-like limbs, were clothed grotesquely in conventional evening dress.

His haggard, bestial face--repulsive with every mark of his wicked, licentious years--grinned with an insane determination to take the place that was his by right of his money bags; while his glazed and sunken eyes shone with fitful gleams, as he rallied the last of his vital forces, with a devilish defiance of the end that was so inevitably near.
As Aaron King, in the splendid strength of his inheritance, went to pay his respects to the master of the house, that poor product of our age was seized by a paroxysm of coughing, that shook him--gasping and choking--almost into unconsciousness.

The ready attendant held out a glass of whisky, and he clutched the goblet with skinny hands that, in their trembling eagerness, rattled the crystal against his teeth.

In the momentary respite afforded by the powerful stimulant, he lifted his yellow, claw-like hand to wipe the clammy beads of sweat that gathered upon his wrinkled, ape-like brow; and the painter saw, on one bony, talon-like finger, the gleaming flash of a magnificent diamond.
Mr.Taine greeted the artist with his husky whisper "Hello, old chap--glad to see you!" Peering into the laughing, chattering, glittering, throng he added, "Some beauties here to-night, heh?
Gad! my boy, but I've seen the day I'd be out there among them! Ha, ha! Mrs.Taine, Louise, and Jim tried to shelve me--but I fooled 'em.