o makes her
ridiculous--he has a regular press agent for her, a chap he loads up
with jewellery and cheques whenever he gets her picture into the
papers."

The Major paused a moment to greet some acquaintance, and then resumed
the conversation. Apparently he could gossip in this intimate fashion
about any person whom you named. Old Simpkins had been very poor as a
boy, it appeared, and he had never got over the memory of it. Miss
Yvette spent fifty thousand at a clip for Paris gowns; but every day
her old uncle would save up the lumps of sugar which came with the
expensive lunch he had brought to his office. And when he had several
pounds he would send them home by messenger!

This conversation gave Montague a new sense of the complicatedness of
the world into which he had come. Miss Simpkins was "impossible"; and
yet there was--for instance--that Mrs. Landis whom he had met at Mrs.
Winnie Duval's. He had met her several times at the show; and he heard
the Major and his sister-in-law chuckling over a paragraph in the
society journal, to the effect that Mrs. Virginia van Rensselaer Landis
had just returned from a successful hunting-trip in the far West. He
did not see the humour of this, at least not until they had told him of
another paragraph which had appeared some time before: stating that
Mrs. Landis had gone to acquire residence in South Dakota, taking with
her thirty-five trunks and a poodle; and that "Leanie" Hopkins, the
handsome young stock-broker, had taken a six months' vow of poverty,
chastity, and obedience.

And yet Mrs. Landis was "in" Society! And moreover, she spent nearly as
much upon her clothes as Miss Yvette, and the clothes were quite as
conspicuous; and if the papers did not print pages about them, it was
not because Mrs. Landis was not perfectly willing. She was painted and
made up quite as frankly as any chorus-girl on the stage. She laughed a
great deal, and in a high key, and she and her friends told stories
which made Montague wish to move out of the way.

Mrs. Landis had for some reason taken a fancy to Alice, and invited her
home to lunch with her twice during the show. And after they had got
home in the evening, the girl sat upon the bed in her fur-trimmed
wrapper, and told Montague and his mother and Mammy Lucy all about her
visit.

"I don't believe that woman has a thing to do or to think about in the
world except to wear clothes!" she said. "Why, she has adjustable
mirrors on bal