“Did Jack propose?” exclaimed the Major.

“Of course he did,” said the girl.  “His brother told me.”  Then, for Montague’s benefit, she explained, “Jack Audubon is the Major’s nephew, and he’s a bookworm, and spends all his time collecting scarabs.”

“What did he say to her?” asked the Major, highly amused.

“Why,” said Betty, “he told her he knew she didn’t love him; but also she knew that he didn’t care anything about her money, and she might like to marry him so that other men would let her alone.”

“Gad!” cried the old gentleman, slapping his knee.  “A masterpiece!”

“Does she have so many suitors?” asked Montague; and the Major replied, “My dear boy—­she’ll have a hundred million dollars some day!”

At this point Oliver put in appearance, and Betty got up and went for a stroll with him; then Montague asked for light upon Miss Hegan’s remark.

“What she said is perfectly true,” replied the Major; “only it riled Betty.  There’s many a gallant dame cruising the social seas who has stowed her old relatives out of sight in the hold.”

“What’s the matter with old Simpkins?” asked tho other.

“Just a queer boy,” was the reply.  “He has a big pile, and his one joy in life is the divine Yvette.  It is really he who makes her ridiculous—­he has a regular press agent for her, a chap he loads up with jewellery and cheques whenever he gets her picture into the papers.”

The Major paused a moment to greet some acquaintance, and then resumed the conversation.  Apparently he could gossip in this intimate fashion about any person whom you named.  Old Simpkins had been very poor as a boy, it appeared, and he had never got over the memory of it.  Miss Yvette spent fifty thousand at a clip for Paris gowns; but every day her old uncle would save up the lumps of sugar which came with the expensive lunch he had brought to his office.  And when he had several pounds he would send them home by messenger!

This conversation gave Montague a new sense of the complicatedness of the world into which he had come.  Miss Simpkins was “impossible”; and yet there was—­for instance—­that Mrs. Landis whom he had met at Mrs. Winnie Duval’s.  He had mot her several times at the show; and he heard the Major and his sister-in-law chuckling over a paragraph in the society journal, to the effect that Mrs. Virginia van Rensselaer Landis had just returned from a successful hunting-trip in the far West.  He did not see the humour of this, at least not until they had told him of another paragraph which had appeared some time before:  stating that Mrs. Landis had gone to acquire residence in South Dakota, taking with her thirty-five trunks and a poodle; and that “Leanie” Hopkins, the handsome young stock-broker, had taken a six months’ vow of poverty, chastity, and obedience.

And yet Mrs. Landis was “in” Society!  And moreover, she spent nearly as much upon her clothes as Miss Yvette, and the clothes were quite as conspicuous; and if the papers did not print pages about them, it was not because Mrs. Landis was not perfectly willing.  She was painted and made up quite as frankly as any chorus-girl on the stage.  She laughed a great deal, and in a high key, and she and her friends told stories which made Montague wish to move out of the way.