tague heard later of a well-known Society leader who was totally
incapacitated that winter, from too much bridge at Newport; and she was
passing the winter at Hot Springs and Palm Beach--and playing bridge
there. They played it even in sanitariums, to which they had been
driven by nervous breakdown. It was an occupation so exhausting to the
physique of women that physicians came to know the symptoms of it, and
before they diagnosed a case, they would ask, "Do you play bridge?" It
had destroyed the last remnants of the Sabbath--it was a universal
custom to have card-parties on that day.

It was a very expensive game, as they played it in Society; one might
easily win or lose several thousand dollars in an evening, and there
were many who could not afford this. If one did not play, he would be
dropped from the lists of those invited; and when one entered a game,
etiquette required him to stay in until it was finished. So one heard
of young girls who had pawned their family plate, or who had sold their
honour, to pay their bills at the game; and all Society knew of one
youth who had robbed his hostess of her jewels and pawned them, and
then taken her the tickets--telling her that her guests had robbed him.
There were women received in the best Society, who lived as
adventuresses pure and simple, upon their skill at the game; hostesses
would invite rich guests and fleece them. Montague never forgot the
sense of amazement and dismay with which he listened while first Mrs.
Winnie and then his brother warned him that he must avoid playing with
a certain aristocratic dame whom he met in this most aristocratic
household--because she was such a notorious cheater!

"My dear fellow," laughed his brother, when he protested, "we have a
phrase 'to cheat at cards like a woman.'" And then Oliver went on to
tell him of his own first experience at cards in Society, when he had
played poker with several charming young debutantes; they would call
their hands and take the money without showing their cards, and he had
been too gallant to ask to see them. But later he learned that this was
a regular practice, and so he never played poker with women. And Oliver
pointed out one of these girls to his brother--sitting, as beautiful as
a picture and as cold as marble, with a half-smoked cigarette on the
edge of the table, and whisky and soda and glasses of cracked ice
beside her. Later on, as he chanced to be reading a newspaper, his
brother leane