let me tell you what not to do in
New York."

Then Montague turned to talk with his hostess, who sat on his right.

"Do you play bridge?" asked Mrs. Winnie, in her softest and most
gracious tone.

"My brother has given me a book to study from," he answered. "But if he
takes me about day and night, I don't know how I'm to manage it."

"Come and let me teach you," said Mrs. Winnie. "I mean it, really," she
added. "I've nothing to do--at least that I'm not tired of. Only I
don't believe you'd take long to learn all that I know."

"Aren't you a successful player?" he asked sympathetically.

"I don't believe anyone wants me to learn," said Mrs. Winnie.--"They'd
rather come and get my money. Isn't that true, Major?"

Major Venable sat on her other hand, and he paused in the act of
raising a spoonful of soup to his lips, and laughed, deep down in his
throat--a queer little laugh that shook his fat cheeks and neck. "I may
say," he said, "that I know several people to whom the status quo is
satisfactory."

"Including yourself," said the lady, with a little moue. "The wretched
man won sixteen hundred dollars from me last night; and he sat in his
club window all afternoon, just to have the pleasure of laughing at me
as I went by. I don't believe I'll play at all to-night--I'm going to
make myself agreeable to Mr. Montague, and let you win from Virginia
Landis for a change."

And then the Major paused again in his attack upon the soup. "My dear
Mrs. Winnie," he said, "I can live for much more than one day upon
sixteen hundred dollars!"

The Major was a famous club-man and bon vivant, as Montague learned
later on. "He's an uncle of Mrs. Bobbie Walling's," said Mrs. Alden, in
his ear. "And incidentally they hate each other like poison."

"That is so that I won't repeat my luckless question again?" asked
Montague, with a smile.

"Oh, they meet," said the other. "You wouldn't be supposed to know
that. Won't you have any Scotch?"

Montague's thoughts were so much taken up with the people at this
repast that he gave little thought to the food. He noticed with
surprise that they had real spring lamb--it being the middle of
November. But he could not know that the six-weeks-old creatures from
which it had come had been raised in cotton-wool and fed on milk with a
spoon--and had cost a dollar and a half a pound. A little later,
however, there was placed before him a delicately browned sweetbread
upon a platter of gold, and