Sometimes on horseback, sometimes on foot, sometimes accompanied by his host, sometimes alone, Ducie explored the lovely country round Bon Repos to his heart’s content.  Another source of pleasure and healthful exercise he found in long solitary pulls up and down the lake in a tiny skiff which had been set apart for his service.  In the evening came dinner and conversation with his host, with perhaps a game or two of billiards to finish up the day.

Captain Ducie found no scope for the exercise of his gambling proclivities at Bon Repos.  Platzoff never touched card or dice.  He could handle a cue tolerably well, but beyond a half-crown game, Ducie giving him ten points out of fifty, he could never be persuaded to venture.  If the Captain, when he went down to Bon Repos, had any expectation of replenishing his pockets by means of faro and unlimited loo, he was wretchedly mistaken.  But whatever secret annoyance he might feel, he was too much a man of the world to allow his host even to suspect its existence.

Of society in the ordinary meaning of that word there was absolutely none at Bon Repos.  None of the neighbouring families by any chance ever called on Platzoff.  By no chance did Platzoff ever call on any of the neighbouring families.

“They are too good for me, too orthodox, too strait-laced,” exclaimed the Russian one day in his quiet, jeering way.  “Or it may be that I am not good enough for them.  Any way, we do not coalesce.  Rather are we like flint and steel, and eliminate a spark whenever we come in contact.  They look upon me as a pagan, and hold me in horror.  I look upon three-fourths of them as Pharisees, and hold them in contempt.  Good people there are among them no doubt; people whom it would be a pleasure to know, but I have neither time, health, nor inclination for conventional English visiting—­for your ponderous style of hospitality.  I am quite sure that my ideas of men and manners would not coincide with those of the quiet country ladies and gentlemen of these parts; while theirs would seem to me terribly wearisome and jejune.  Therefore, as I take it, we are better apart.”

By and by Ducie discovered that his host was not so entirely isolated from the world as at first sight he appeared to be.

Occasional society there was of a certain kind, intermittent, coming and going like birds of passage.  One, or sometimes two visitors, of whose arrival Ducie had heard no previous mention, would now and again put in an appearance at the dinner-table, would pass one, or at the most two nights at Bon Repos, and would then be seen no more, having gone as mysteriously as they had come.

These visitors were always foreigners, now of one nationality, now of another:  and were always closeted privately with Platzoff for several hours.  In appearance some of them were strangely shabby and unkempt, in a wild, un-English sort of fashion, while others among them seemed like men to whom the good things of this world were no strangers.  But whatever their appearance, they were all treated by Platzoff as honoured guests for whom nothing at his command was too good.