“But how does she get their money?”

“She never tells a hard-luck story—­you can’t get money out of the kind she goes with, that way.  She takes the other tack.  She whispers to them, and laughs with them, and fondles them, and makes them love her, and when they love her she says:  ’But dearie, be reasonable!  Think how many people love me!  I like to have you here, you fat old darling with the gold jingling in your pockets! but I can’t let you sit with me unless you pay.  Yes, I’m expensive, I admit.  But don’t you love this scent I wear?  Don’t you adore my tropical winter sea, my gardens, my palm trees, my moonlight, and my music?  They are all for you, dearie—­so why shouldn’t you pay?  Don’t I take you from the northern cold and slush?  Haven’t I built a siding for your private car, and made an anchorage for your yacht?  Don’t I let you do as you please?  Don’t I keep you amused?  Don’t you love to look at me?  Don’t I put my warm red lips to yours?  Well, then, dearie, what is all your money for?’ ...  That is her way of talking to them!  That is the sort of creature that she is!”

“Shocking!” says the visitor, rising and looking for his hat “You say hers is the third large house from here?”

“Yes.  Remember, she’s as mercenary as can be!”

“Thanks.  I can take care of myself.  If she’s amusing that suits me.  Good-by.”

In the vestibule he pauses to count his money.

“Jacksonville seems to be a nice girl,” he says to himself as he hastens down the block.  “I imagine she might make a good wife and mother, and that she’d help her husband on in business.  However, I’m not thinking of getting married and settling down in Florida.  I’m out for some fun.  I think I’ll run in and call upon Mrs. Palm-Beach.”

CHAPTER LIII

PASSIONATE PALM BEACH

    A very merry, dancing, drinking,
    Laughing, quaffing and unthinking time.

    —­DRYDEN.

Like all places in which idlers try to avoid finding out that they are idle, Palm Beach has very definite customs as to where to go, and at what time to go there.  Excepting in its hours for going to bed and getting up, it runs on schedule.  The official day begins with the bathing hour—­half past eleven to half past twelve—­when the two or three thousand people from the pair of vast hotels assemble before the casino on the beach.  Golfers will, of course, be upon the links before this hour; fishermen will be casting from the pier or will be out in boats searching the sail fish—­that being the “fashionable” fish at the present time; ladies of excessive circumference will be panting rapidly along the walks, their eyes holding that look of dreamy determination which painters put into the eyes of martyrs, and which a fixed intention to lose twenty pounds puts into the eyes of banting women.  So, too, certain gentlemen of swarthy skin make their