rough the spring and summer in England partly on their
wits, partly through impressing landlords and travelling nonentities
with their social importance, and partly through their successes at
bridge. For they both played bridge extremely well, too well, it had
once or twice been said of Lord Dauntrey in South Africa.

Lady Dauntrey's "plan" was to get together as many paying guests as
possible, enlist their interest in the "system," or, if they could not
be persuaded into that, to earn for herself something even better than
board-money, by introducing rich girls to men of title. She had not
doubted her opportunities for thrusting her female pigeons into society,
or of getting hold of young foreign aristocrats, perhaps even
Englishmen, who were "out for dollars," as her girls would be out for
dukes--or the next best thing after dukes. And she had begun well.

The house she had secured was cheap; and she brought with her from
England three women who would alone pay more than enough to keep it up.
Her husband's friend, Dom Ferdinand de Trevanna, and his faithful
follower, the Marquis de Casablanca, had fulfilled a promise to meet
them at Monte Carlo on the day after their arrival at the villa. Several
other guests were expected--the young widow of a rich stockbroker; two
Jewish heiresses who still called themselves girls; an elderly,
impecunious English earl; an Austrian count who had failed to find a
wife in England, and a naval lieutenant who was heir to an impoverished
baronetcy: a set of people sure to be congenial, because each wanted
something which another could give. Everything ought to have been
satisfactory, even from Dauntrey's point of view, for he had interested
all the men in his system, and what money they could spare would be put
into it; he would play for the "syndicate"; or if the men preferred
gambling themselves, they must give him something for the system which
he was prepared to teach.

When she arrived at Monte Carlo on a beautiful day of sunshine, which
seemed a good omen, Eve Dauntrey believed that at last luck had turned
for her. She thought that the thing she had longed for, year after year,
was coming at last; and she was proud of the plan she had made, proud of
the way in which she had worked it out. But the moment she entered the
villa in the Condamine, her spirits were damped almost as if, by some
monkey-trick, a jug of cold water had been upset on her head as the door
opened to let her in.