Mr.Lanley decided that he must go to work, though he abandoned his traditions no further than to study law.

His ancestors, like many of the aristocrats of the early days, had allowed their opinions of fashion to influence too much their selection of real estate.

All through the late seventies, while his brothers and sisters were clinging sentimentally to brownstone fronts in Stuyvesant Square or red-brick facades in Great Jones Street, Mr.Lanley himself, unaffected by recollections of Uncle Joel's death or grandma's marriage, had been parting with his share in such properties, and investing along the east side of the park.
By the time he was forty he was once more a fairly rich man.

He had left the practice of law to become the president of the Peter Stuyvesant Trust Company, for which he had been counsel.

After fifteen years he had retired from this, too, and had become, what he insisted nature had always intended him to be, a gentleman of leisure.