Eldridge Devon’s occupation was playing with his country-place and his automobiles.  He had recently sold all his horses, and turned his stables into a garage equipped with a score or so of cars; he was always getting a new one, and discussing its merits.  As to Hudson Cliff, the estate, he had conceived the brilliant idea of establishing a gentleman’s country-place which should be self-supporting—­that is to say, which should furnish the luxuries and necessities of its owner’s table for no more than it would have cost to buy them.  Considering the prices usually paid, this was no astonishing feat, but Devon took a child’s delight in it; he showed Montague his greenhouses, filled with rare flowers and fruits, and his model dairy, with marble stables and nickel plumbing, and attendants in white uniforms and rubber gloves.  He was a short and very stout gentleman with red cheeks, and his conversation was not brilliant.

To Hudson Cliff came many of Montague’s earlier acquaintances, and others whom he had not met before.  They amused themselves in all the ways with which-he had become familiar at house-parties; likewise on Christmas Eve there were festivities for the children, and on Christmas night a costume ball, very beautiful and stately.  Many came from New York to attend this, and others from the neighbourhood; and in returning calls, Montague saw others of these hill-top mansions.

Also, and most important of all, they played bridge—­as they had played at every function which he had attended so far.  Here Mrs. Winnie, who had rather taken him up, and threatened to supplant Oliver as his social guide and chaperon, insisted that no more excuses would be accepted; and so for two mornings he sat with her in one of the sun-parlours, and diligently put his mind upon the game.  As he proved an apt pupil, he was then advised that he might take a trial plunge.

And so Montague came into touch with a new social phenomenon; perhaps on the whole the most significant and soul-disturbing phenomenon which Society had exhibited to him.  He had just had the experience of getting a great deal of money without earning it, and was fresh from the disagreeable memories of it—­the trembling and suspense, the burning lustful greed, the terrible nerve-devouring excitement.  He had hoped that he would not soon have to go through such an experience again-and here was the prospect of an endless dalliance with it!

For that was the meaning of bridge; it was a penalty which people were paying for getting their money without earning it.  The disease got into their blood, and they could no longer live without the excitement of gain and the hope of gain.  So after their labours were over, when they were supposed to be resting and enjoying themselves, they would get together and torment themselves with an imitation struggle, mimicking the grim and dreadful gamble of business.  Down in the Street, Oliver had pointed out to his brother a celebrated “plunger,” who had sometimes won six or eight millions in a single day; and that man would play at stocks all morning, and “play the ponies” in the afternoon, and then spend the evening in a millionaires’ gambling-house.  And so it was with the bridge fiends.