Another week-end came, and with it an invitation from the Lester Todds to visit them at their country place in New Jersey.  Montague was buried in his books, but his brother routed him out with strenuous protests.  His case be damned—­was he going to ruin his career for one case?  At all hazards, he must meet people—­“people who counted.”  And the Todds were such, a big money crowd, and a power in the insurance world; if Montague were going to be an insurance lawyer, he could not possibly decline their invitation.  Freddie Vandam would be a guest—­and Montague smiled at the tidings that Betty Wyman would be there also.  He had observed that his brother’s week-end visits always happened at places where Betty was, and where Betty’s granddaddy was not.

So Montague’s man packed his grips, and Alice’s maid her trunks; and they rode with a private-car party to a remote Jersey suburb, and were whirled in an auto up a broad shell road to a palace upon the top of a mountain.  Here lived the haughty Lester Todds, and scattered about on the neighbouring hills, a set of the ultra-wealthy who had withdrawn to this seclusion.  They were exceedingly “classy”; they affected to regard all the Society of the city with scorn, and had their own all-the-year-round diversions—­an open-air horse show in summer, and in the fall fox-hunting in fancy uniforms.

The Lester Todds themselves were ardent pursuers of all varieties of game, and in various clubs and private preserves they followed the seasons, from Florida and North Carolina to Ontario, with occasional side trips to Norway, and New Brunswick, and British Columbia.  Here at home they had a whole mountain of virgin forest, carefully preserved; and in the Renaissance palace at the summit-which they carelessly referred to as a “lodge”—­you would find such articles de vertu as a ten-thousand-dollar table with a set of two-thousand-dollar chairs, and quite ordinary-looking rugs at ten and twenty thousand dollars each.—­All these prices you might ascertain without any difficulty at all, because there were many newspaper articles describing the house to be read in an album in the hall.  On Saturday afternoons Mrs. Todd welcomed the neighbours in a pastel grey reception-gown, the front of which contained a peacock embroidered in silk, with jewels in every feather, and a diamond solitaire for an eye; and in the evening there was a dance, and she appeared in a gown with several hundred diamonds sewn upon it, and received her guests upon a rug set with jewels to match.

All together, Montague judged this the “fastest” set he had yet encountered; they ate more and drank more and intrigued more openly.  He had been slowly acquiring the special lingo of Society, but these people had so much more slang that he felt all lost again.  A young lady who was gossiping to him about those present remarked that a certain youth was a “spasm”; and then, seeing the look of perplexity upon his face, she laughed, “I don’t believe you know what I mean!” Montague replied that he had ventured to infer that she did not like him.