ality."

Montague was reminded of the story of the Roman emperor who pointed out
that money had no smell.

"Maybe not," said the Major. "But all the same, if you were
superstitious, you might make out an argument from the Havens fortune.
Take that poor girl who married the Count."

And the Major went on to picture the denouement of that famous
international alliance, which, many years ago, had been the sensation
of two continents. All Society had attended the gorgeous wedding, an
archbishop had performed the ceremony, and the newspapers had devoted
pages to describing the gowns and the jewels and the presents and all
the rest of the magnificence. And the Count was a wretched little
degenerate, who beat and kicked his wife, and flaunted his mistresses
in her face, and wasted fourteen million dollars of her money in a
couple of years. The mind could scarcely follow the orgies of this
half-insane creature--he had spent two hundred thousand dollars on a
banquet, and half as much again for a tortoise-shell wardrobe in which
Louis the Sixteenth had kept his clothes! He had charged a diamond
necklace to his wife, and taken two of the four rows of diamonds out of
it before he presented it to her! He had paid a hundred thousand
dollars a year to a jockey whom the Parisian populace admired, and a
fortune for a palace in Verona, which he had promptly torn down, for
the sake of a few painted ceilings. The Major told about one outdoor
fete, which he had given upon a sudden whim: ten thousand Venetian
lanterns, ten thousand metres of carpet; three thousand gilded chairs,
and two or three hundred waiters in fancy costumes; two palaces built
in a lake, with sea-horses and dolphins, and half a dozen orchestras,
and several hundred chorus--girls from the Grand Opera! And in between
adventures such as these, he bought a seat in the Chamber of Deputies,
and made speeches and fought duels in defence of the Holy Catholic
Church--and wrote articles for the yellow journals of America. "And
that's the fate of my lost dividends!" growled the Major.

There were several automobiles to meet the party at the depot, and they
were whirled through a broad avenue up a valley, and past a little
lake, and so to the gates of Castle Havens.

It was a tremendous building, a couple of hundred feet long. One
entered into a main hall, perhaps fifty feet wide, with a great
fireplace arid staircase of marble and bronze, and furniture of gilded
wood and crim