ere they can cook peas."

Lord Hubert Dacey, a slender shabby-looking man, with a charming worn
smile, and the air of having spent his best years in piloting the wealthy
to the right restaurant, assented with gentle emphasis: "It's quite that."

"PEAS?" said Mr. Bry contemptuously. "Can they cook terrapin? It just
shows," he continued, "what these European markets are, when a fellow can
make a reputation cooking peas!"

Jack Stepney intervened with authority. "I don't know that I quite agree
with Dacey: there's a little hole in Paris, off the Quai Voltaire--but in
any case, I can't advise the Condamine GARGOTE; at least not with ladies."

Stepney, since his marriage, had thickened and grown prudish, as the Van
Osburgh husbands were apt to do; but his wife, to his surprise and
discomfiture, had developed an earth-shaking fastness of gait which left
him trailing breathlessly in her wake.

"That's where we'll go then!" she declared, with a heavy toss of her
plumage. "I'm so tired of the TERRASSE: it's as dull as one of mother's
dinners. And Lord Hubert has promised to tell us who all the awful people
are at the other place--hasn't he, Carry? Now, Jack, don't look so
solemn!"

"Well," said Mrs. Bry, "all I want to know is who their dress-makers are."

"No doubt Dacey can tell you that too," remarked Stepney, with an ironic
intention which the other received with the light murmur, "I can at least
FIND OUT, my dear fellow"; and Mrs. Bry having declared that she couldn't
walk another step, the party hailed two or three of the light phaetons
which hover attentively on the confines of the gardens, and rattled off
in procession toward the Condamine.

Their destination was one of the little restaurants overhanging the
boulevard which dips steeply down from Monte Carlo to the low
intermediate quarter along the quay. From the window in which they
presently found themselves installed, they overlooked the intense blue
curve of the harbour, set between the verdure of twin promontories: to
the right, the cliff of Monaco, topped by the mediaeval silhouette of its
church and castle, to the left the terraces and pinnacles of the
gambling-house. Between the two, the waters of the bay were furrowed by a
light coming and going of pleasure-craft, through which, just at the
culminating moment of luncheon, the majestic advance of a great
steam-yacht drew the company's attention from the peas.

"By Jove, I believe that's the Dorsets bac