Montague had heard nothing about the visit to the Havens’s; but now, as they strolled down the Avenue, Oliver explained that they were to spend the weekend at Castle Havens.  There was quite a party going up this Friday afternoon, and they would find one of the Havens’s private cars waiting.  They had nothing to do meantime, for their valets would attend to their packing, and Alice and her maid would meet them at the depot.

“Castle Havens is one of the show places of the country,” Oliver added.  “You’ll see the real thing this time.”  And while they lunched, he went on to entertain his brother with particulars concerning the place and its owners.  John had inherited the bulk of the enormous Havens fortune, and he posed as his father’s successor in the Steel Trust.  Some day some one of the big men would gobble him up; meantime he amused himself fussing over the petty details of administration.  Mrs. Havens had taken a fancy to a rural life, and they had built this huge palace in the hills of Connecticut, and she wrote verses in which she pictured herself as a simple shepherdess—­and all that sort of stuff.  But no one minded that, because the place was gr’and, and there was always so much to do.  They had forty or fifty polo ponies, for instance, and every spring the place was filled with polo men.

At the depot they caught sight of Charlie Carter, in his big red touring-car.  “Are you going to the Havens’s?” he said.  “Tell them we’re going to pick up Chauncey on the way.”

“That’s Chauncey Venable, the Major’s nephew,” said Oliver, as they strolled to the train.  “Poor Chauncey—­he’s in exile!”

“How do you mean?” asked Montague.

“Why, he daren’t come into New York,” said the other.  “Haven’t you read about it in the papers?  He lost one or two hundred thousand the other night in a gambling place, and the district attorney’s trying to catch him.”

“Does he want to put him in jail?” asked Montague.

“Heavens, no!” said Oliver.  “Put a Venable in jail?  He wants him for a witness against the gambler; and poor Chauncey is flitting about the country hiding with his friends, and wailing because he’ll miss the Horse Show.”

They boarded the palatial private car, and were introduced to a number of other guests.  Among them was Major Venable; and while Oliver buried himself in the new issue of the fantastic-covered society journal, which contained the poem of the erotic “Ysabel,” his brother chatted with the Major.  The latter had taken quite a fancy to the big handsome stranger, to whom everything in the city was so new and interesting.”

“Tell me what you thought of the Snow Palace,” said he.  “I’ve an idea that Mrs. Winnie’s got quite a crush on you.  You’ll find her dangerous, my boy—­she’ll make you pay for your dinners before you get through!”