son velvet, and a huge painting, covering three of the
walls, representing the Conquest of Peru. Each of the rooms was
furnished in the style of a different period--one Louis Quatorze, one
Louis Quinze, one Marie Antoinette, and so on. There was a drawing-room
and a regal music-room; a dining-room in the Georgian style, and a
billiard-room, also in the English fashion, with high wainscoting and
open beams in the ceiling; and a library, and a morning-room and
conservatory. Upstairs in the main suite of rooms was a royal bedstead,
which alone was rumoured to have cost twenty-five thousand dollars; and
you might have some idea of the magnificence of things when you learned
that underneath the gilding of the furniture was the rare and precious
Circassian walnut.

All this was beautiful. But what brought the guests to Castle Havens
was the casino, so the Major had remarked. It was really a private
athletic club--with tan-bark hippodrome, having a ring the size of that
in Madison Square Garden, and a skylight roof, and thirty or forty
arc-lights for night events. There were bowling-alleys, billiard and
lounging-rooms, hand-ball, tennis and racket-courts, a completely
equipped gymnasium, a shooting-gallery, and a swimming-pool with
Turkish and Russian baths. In this casino alone there were rooms for
forty guests.

Such was Castle Havens; it had cost three or four millions of dollars,
and within the twelve-foot wall which surrounded its grounds lived two
world-weary people who dreaded nothing so much as to be alone. There
were always guests, and on special occasions there might be three or
four score. They went whirling about the country in their autos; they
rode and drove; they played games, outdoor and indoor, or gambled, or
lounged and chatted, or wandered about at their own sweet will. Coming
to one of these places was not different from staying at a great hotel,
save that the company was selected, and instead of paying a bill, you
gave twenty or thirty dollars to the servants when you left.

It was a great palace of pleasure, in which beautiful and graceful men
and women played together in all sorts of beautiful and graceful ways.
In the evenings great logs blazed in the fireplace in the hall, and
there might be an informal dance--there was always music at hand. Now
and then there would be a stately ball, with rich gowns and flashing
jewels, and the grounds ablaze with lights, and a full orchestra, and
special trains fr