amonds, splendid in themselves, were too magnificent
for the occasion. At last, sweeping up the money, Haddo touched her on
the shoulder, and she rose. Behind her was standing a painted woman of
notorious disreputability. Susie was astonished to see Margaret smile and
nod as she passed her.

Susie learnt that the Haddos had a suite of rooms at the most expensive
of the hotels. They lived in a whirl of gaiety. They knew few English
except those whose reputations were damaged, but seemed to prefer the
society of those foreigners whose wealth and eccentricities made them the
cynosure of that little world. Afterwards, she often saw them, in company
of Russian Grand-Dukes and their mistresses, of South American women with
prodigious diamonds, of noble gamblers and great ladies of doubtful fame,
of strange men overdressed and scented. Rumour was increasingly busy with
them. Margaret moved among all those queer people with a cold
mysteriousness that excited the curiosity of the sated idlers. The
suggestion which Susie overheard was repeated more circumstantially. But
to this was joined presently the report of orgies that were enacted in
the darkened sitting-room of the hotel, when all that was noble and
vicious in Monte Carlo was present. Oliver's eccentric imagination
invented whimsical festivities. He had a passion for disguise, and he
gave a fancy-dress party of which fabulous stories were told. He sought
to revive the mystical ceremonies of old religions, and it was reported
that horrible rites had been performed in the garden of the villa, under
the shining moon, in imitation of those he had seen in Eastern places. It
was said that Haddo had magical powers of extraordinary character, and
the tired imagination of those pleasure-seekers was tickled by his talk
of black art. Some even asserted that the blasphemous ceremonies of the
Black Mass had been celebrated in the house of a Polish Prince. People
babbled of satanism and of necromancy. Haddo was thought to be immersed
in occult studies for the performance of a magical operation; and some
said that he was occupied with the Magnum Opus, the greatest and most
fantastic of alchemical experiments. Gradually these stories were
narrowed down to the monstrous assertion that he was attempting to create
living beings. He had explained at length to somebody that magical
receipts existed for the manufacture of _homunculi_.

Haddo was known generally by the name he was pleased to giv