e wine of sunset.

Mary forgot that people do not come to hotels for the sole purpose of
standing on the steps to admire a view. It was a liveried servant who
politely reminded her of her duty by holding the glass door open and
murmuring a suggestion that Mademoiselle should give herself the pain of
entering. Then, slightly dazed by new impressions and the magnitude of
her independence, Mary walked humbly into an immense hall, marble paved
and marble columned. She had never seen anything half so gorgeous, and
though she did not know yet whether she liked or disliked the
bewildering decorations of mermaids and sea animals and flowers, she was
struck by their magnificent audacity into a sense of her own
insignificance. Before she could dare to walk here as by right, or seat
herself in one of those great gilded and brocaded chairs, she must buy
clothes which suited Monte Carlo as all this florid splendour of
ornamentation suited it. She did not put this in words, but like all
women possessed of "temperament," had in her something of the
chameleon, and instinctively wished to match her tints with her
environment.

Suddenly she recalled a solemn warning from Mrs. Home-Davis that some
hotels refused to receive women travelling alone, and her heart was
inclined to fail as she asked for a room. But fortunately this was not
one of those cruel hotels Aunt Sara had heard about. Mary was received
civilly and without surprise. A view of the sea? Certainly Mademoiselle
could have a room with a view of the sea. It would be at the price of
from thirty to fifty francs a day. Mary said that she would like to see
a room for thirty francs, and felt economical and virtuous as she did
so. She had been brought up to consider economy a good thing in the
abstract, but she knew practically nothing of the value of money, as she
had never bought anything for herself until she went to London. It
seemed to her now that, with fifty thousand pounds, she was so rich that
she could have anything she wanted in the world, but she had nebulous
ideas as to what to want.

A pretty little pink and gray room was shown her, so pretty that it
seemed cheap until she heard that food and everything else was "extra";
but the view decided her to take it. The large window looked southwest,
with the harbour and rock of Monaco to the right, and to the left an
exquisite group of palms on the Casino terrace, which gave an almost
mysterious value to a background of viol