sad story hushed up; a
prudent disappearance from Europe, urged by annoyed aristocratic
relatives who had little money to speed his departure, but gave what
they could; professional failure in South Africa; some gambling-trouble
in Johannesburg, and a vanishing again into the unknown. Nevertheless
his title was an old one. Men of his race had loomed great in dim
historic days, and though during the last two centuries no Dauntrey had
done anything notable except lose money, sell land, go bankrupt, figure
in divorce cases or card scandals, and marry actresses, they had never
in their degeneration lost that charm which, in Charles II's day, had
won from a pretty Duchess the nickname of the "darling Dauntreys."

The present viscount was the last and perhaps the least of his race;
yet, because of his name and the lingering charm--like the sad perfume
of _pot-pourri_ clinging to a broken jar--he would have been given the
prodigal's welcome at Monte Carlo (that agreeable pound for lost
reputations) but for one drawback. The stumbling block was the woman he
had made Lady Dauntrey.

In the permanent English colony on the Riviera, with its jewelled
sprinkling of American millionaires and its glittering fringe of foreign
notables, there are a few charming women upon whom depends the fate of
newcomers. These great ladies turned down their thumbs when with
experienced eyes they looked upon Lord Dauntrey's wife, when their
trained ears heard her voice, with its curiously foreign, slightly rough
accent.

Nobody wanted or intended to turn an uncompromising back upon her. Lord
Dauntrey and she could be invited to big entertainments--the mid-season
"squashes" which wiped off boring obligations, paid compliments quickly
and easily, and pleased the outer circles of acquaintanceship. But for
intimate things, little luncheons and little dinners to the elect, she
would not "do"; which was a pity--because as a bachelor Lord Dauntrey
might have been furbished up and made to do quite well. As things stood,
the best that could happen to the pair, if they were found to play
bridge well, was to be asked to the bridge parties of the great; while
for other entertainments they would have to depend on outsiders to whom
a title was a title, no matter how tarnished or how tattered.

As Rose Winter had said to Carleton, "Who _isn't_ Who, if they can play
bridge?" But it had been important for Lady Dauntrey's plans not to be
received on sufferance. She