nnis, a gift for Bridge, better
clothes than other people, or a talent for private theatricals, would
help them to be on the right side of the line they were so anxious to
cross. Add to these, numbers of pretty girls anxious only to enjoy
themselves, and swarms of young men who had come for the same reason,
and it will be imagined that the atmosphere reigning in the brilliantly
lighted Casino, in and around which the joyous spent their evenings
singing, dancing, wandering in the grounds, was singularly different
from that of the little isolated pavilion where Rendel sat trying to
fashion the picture of his life into something that he could look upon
without a shudder.

CHAPTER XX

The walls of the little town were placarded with the announcement of a
great bazaar to be held for the benefit of the English Church in
Bad-Schleppenheim. The economics of a fashionable bazaar are evidently
governed by certain obscure laws, of which the knowledge is yet in
infancy; for the ordinary laws of commerce are on these occasions
completely suspended. That of supply and demand becomes inverted, since
the vendors are seemingly eager to sell all that the buyers least want:
the cost of production, of which statistics are not obtainable, the
expenditure of money, time, and energy required to furnish the stalls is
not taken into account at all. Loss and profit appear to be inextricably
mingled; however much unsold merchandise remains on the stall at the end
of the bazaar the seller is expected to hand over a substantial sum to
the good object for which she is supposed to have been working. And yet
there must be some advantage in this method of raising money, or even
the female mind would presumably not at once turn to it as the simplest
and most obvious way of obtaining funds for a given purpose.

These problems, however, did not exist for Lady Chaloner, one of the
leaders of English Society in Schleppenheim. She took bazaars for
granted, as she did everything else. She was one of the very pillars of
the social fabric of her country. She was of noble blood, she was
portly, she was decidedly middle-aged. She had been recommended to diet
herself and to drink the waters of Schleppenheim, and as she did so in
company with half the distinguished people in Europe, she was quite
content to follow the course prescribed. In these days when everything
is called into question, when social codes alter, and an undesirable
fusion of human bein