ed to learn that a
chattering little woman of thirty-five, who gossiped with everybody, and
soon invited Denry and Nellie to have tea in her room, was an authentic
Russian Countess, inscribed in the visitors' lists as "Comtesse Ruhl
(with maid), Moscow." Her room was the untidiest that Nellie had ever
seen, and the tea a picnic. Still, it was thrilling to have had tea with
a Russian Countess.... (Plots! Nihilism! Secret police! Marble
palaces!).... Those visitors' lists were breath-taking. Pages and pages
of them; scores of hotels, thousands of names, nearly all English--and
all people who came to Switzerland in winter, having naught else to do.
Denry and Nellie bathed in correctness as in a bath.

The only persons in the hotel with whom they did not "get on" nor "hit
it off" were a military party, chiefly named Clutterbuck, and presided
over by a Major Clutterbuck and his wife. They sat at a large table in a
corner--father, mother, several children, a sister-in-law, a sister, a
governess--eight heads in all; and while utterly polite they seemed to
draw a ring round themselves. They grumbled at the hotel; they played
bridge (then a newish game); and once, when Denry and the Countess
played with them (Denry being an adept card-player) for shilling points,
Denry overheard the sister-in-law say that she was sure Captain Deverax
wouldn't play for shilling points. This was the first rumour of the
existence of Captain Deverax; but afterwards Captain Deverax began to be
mentioned several times a day. Captain Deverax was coming to join them,
and it seemed that he was a very particular man. Soon all the rest of
the hotel had got its back up against this arriving Captain Deverax.
Then a Clutterbuck cousin came, a smiling, hard, fluffy woman, and
pronounced definitely that the Hotel Beau-Site would never do for
Captain Deverax. This cousin aroused Denry's hostility in a strange way.
She imparted to the Countess (who united all sects) her opinion that
Denry and Nellie were on their honeymoon. At night in a corner of the
drawing-room the Countess delicately but bluntly asked Nellie if she had
been married long. "No," said Nellie. "A month?" asked the Countess,
smiling. "N-no," said Nellie.

The next day all the hotel knew. The vast edifice of make-believe that
Denry and Nellie had laboriously erected crumbled at a word, and they
stood forth, those two, blushing for the criminals they were.

The hotel was delighted. There is more r