It was a social plague; it had run through all Society, high and low.  It had destroyed conversation and all good-fellowship—­it would end by destroying even common decency, and turning the best people into vulgar gamblers.—­Thus spoke Mrs. Billy Alden, who was one of the guests; and Montague thought that Mrs. Billy ought to know, for she herself was playing all the time.

Mrs. Billy did not like Mrs. Winnie Duval; and the beginning of the conversation was her inquiry why he let that woman corrupt him.  Then the good lady went on to tell him what bridge had come to be; how people played it on the trains all the way from New York to San Francisco; how they had tables in their autos, and played while they were touring over the world.  “Once,” said she, “I took a party to see the America’s Cup races off Sandy Hook; and when we got back to the pier, some one called, ‘Who won?’ And the answer was, ’Mrs. Billy’s ahead, but we’re going on this evening.’  I took a party of friends through the Mediterranean and up the Nile, and we passed Venice and Cairo and the Pyramids and the Suez Canal, and they never once looked up—­they were playing bridge.  And you think I’m joking, but I mean just literally what I say.  I know a man who was travelling from New York to Philadelphia, and got into a game with some strangers, and rode all the way to Palm Beach to finish it!”

Montague 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!