“Who’s Mrs. Jack Warden?” asked Montague.

“Haven’t you ever heard of her?” said Betty.  “She used to be Mrs. van Ambridge, and then she got a divorce and married Warden, the big lumber man.  She used to give ‘boy and girl’ parties, in the English fashion; and when we went there we’d do as we please—­play tag all over the house, and have pillow-fights, and ransack the closets and get up masquerades!  Mrs. Warden’s as good-natured as an old cow.  You’ll meet her sometime—­only don’t you let her fool you with those soft eyes of hers.  You’ll find she doesn’t mean it; it’s just that she likes to have handsome men hanging round her.”

At one o’clock a few of Robbie’s guests went to bed, Montague among them.  He left two tables of bridge fiends sitting immobile, the women with flushed faces and feverish hands, and the men with cigarettes dangling from their lips.  There were trays and decanters beside each card-table; and in the hall he passed three youths staggering about in each other’s arms and feebly singing snatches of “coon songs.”  Ollie and Betty had strolled away together to parts unknown.

Montague had entered his name in the order-book to be called at nine o’clock.  The man who awakened him brought him coffee and cream upon a silver tray, and asked him if he would have anything stronger.  He was privileged to have his breakfast in his room, if he wished; but he went downstairs, trying his best to feel natural in his elaborate hunting costume.  No one else had appeared yet, but he found the traces of last night cleared away, and breakfast ready—­served in English fashion, with urns of tea and coffee upon the buffet.  The grave butler and his satellites were in attendance, ready to take his order for anything else under the sun that he fancied.

Montague preferred to go for a stroll upon the terrace, and to watch the sunlight sparkling upon the sea.  The morning was beautiful—­everything about the place was so beautiful that he wondered how men and women could live here and not feel the spell of it.

Billy Price came down shortly afterward, clad in a khaki hunting suit, with knee kilts and button-pockets and gun-pads and Cossack cartridge-loops.  She joined him in a stroll down the beach, and talked to him about the coming winter season, with its leading personalities and events,—­the Horse Show, which opened next week, and the prospects for the opera, and Mrs. de Graffenried’s opening entertainment.  When they came back it was eleven o’clock, and they found most of the guests assembled, nearly all of them looking a little pale and uncomfortable in the merciless morning light.  As the two came in they observed Bertie Stuyvesant standing by the buffet, in the act of gulping down a tumbler of brandy.  “Bertie has taken up the ‘no breakfast fad,’” said Billy with an ironical smile.

Then began the hunt.  The equipment of “Black Forest” included a granite building, steam-heated and elaborately fitted, in which an English expert and his assistants raised imported pheasants—­magnificent bronze-coloured birds with long, floating black tails.  Just before the opening of the season they were dumped by thousands into the covers—­fat, and almost tame enough to be fed by hand; and now came the “hunters.”