t he is hardly conscious of his bruises.
Now he suddenly felt the latent ache, and realized that after all he had
not come off unhurt.

An hour later, at Mrs. Fisher's side in the Casino gardens, he was trying
to find fresh reasons for forgetting the injury received in the
contemplation of the peril avoided. The party had dispersed with the
loitering indecision characteristic of social movements at Monte Carlo,
where the whole place, and the long gilded hours of the day, seem to
offer an infinity of ways of being idle. Lord Hubert Dacey had finally
gone off in quest of the Duchess of Beltshire, charged by Mrs. Bry with
the delicate negotiation of securing that lady's presence at dinner, the
Stepneys had left for Nice in their motor-car, and Mr. Bry had departed
to take his place in the pigeon shooting match which was at the moment
engaging his highest faculties.

Mrs. Bry, who had a tendency to grow red and stertorous after luncheon,
had been judiciously prevailed upon by Carry Fisher to withdraw to her
hotel for an hour's repose; and Selden and his companion were thus left
to a stroll propitious to confidences. The stroll soon resolved itself
into a tranquil session on a bench overhung with laurel and Banksian
roses, from which they caught a dazzle of blue sea between marble
balusters, and the fiery shafts of cactus-blossoms shooting meteor-like
from the rock. The soft shade of their niche, and the adjacent glitter of
the air, were conducive to an easy lounging mood, and to the smoking of
many cigarettes; and Selden, yielding to these influences, suffered Mrs.
Fisher to unfold to him the history of her recent experiences. She had
come abroad with the Welly Brys at the moment when fashion flees the
inclemency of the New York spring. The Brys, intoxicated by their first
success, already thirsted for new kingdoms, and Mrs. Fisher, viewing the
Riviera as an easy introduction to London society, had guided their
course thither. She had affiliations of her own in every capital, and a
facility for picking them up again after long absences; and the carefully
disseminated rumour of the Brys' wealth had at once gathered about them a
group of cosmopolitan pleasure-seekers.

"But things are not going as well as I expected," Mrs. Fisher frankly
admitted. "It's all very well to say that every body with money can get
into society; but it would be truer to say that NEARLY everybody can.
And the London market is so glutted with new Am