“They do it because they are friends of mine,” said Oliver, and evidently wished that to satisfy his brother.  But it only shifted the problem and set him to watching Robbie and Oliver, and trying to make out the basis of their relationship.  There was a very grave question concerned in this.  Oliver had come to New York comparatively poor, and now he was rich—­or, at any rate, ho lived like a rich man.  And his brother, whose scent was growing keener with every day of his stay in New York, had about made up his mind that Oliver got his money from Robbie Walling.

Here, again, the problem would have been simple, if it had been another person than Robbie; Montague would have concluded that his brother was a “hanger-on.”  There were many great families whose establishments were infested with such parasites.  Siegfried Harvey, for instance, was a man who had always half a dozen young chaps hanging about him; good-looking and lively fellows, who hunted and played bridge, and amused the married women while their husbands were at work, and who, if ever they dropped a hint that they were hard up, might be reasonably certain of being offered a cheque.  But if the Robbie Wallings were to write cheques, it must be for value received.  And what could the value be?

“Ollie” was rather a little god among the ultra-swagger; his taste was a kind of inspiration.  And yet his brother noticed that in such questions he always deferred instantly to the Wallings; and surely the Wallings were not people to be persuaded that they needed anyone to guide them in matters of taste.  Again, Ollie was the very devil of a wit, and people were heartily afraid of him; and Montague had noticed that he never by any chance made fun of Robbie—­that the fetiches of the house of Walling were always treated with respect.  So he had wondered if by any chance Robbie was maintaining his brother in princely state for the sake of his ability to make other people uncomfortable.  But he realized that the Robbies, in their own view of it, could have no more need of wit than a battleship has need of popguns.  Oliver’s position, when they were about, was rather that of the man who hardly ever dared to be as clever as he might, because of the restless jealousy of his friend.

It was a mystery; and it made the elder brother very uncomfortable.  Alice was young and guileless, and a pleasant person to patronize; but he was a man of the world, and it was his business to protect her.  He had always paid his own way through life, and he was very loath to put himself under obligations to people like the Wallings, whom he did not like, and who, he felt instinctively, could not like him.