wd, and a power in the insurance world; if
Montague were going to be an insurance lawyer, he could not possibly
decline their invitation. Freddie Vandam would be a guest--and Montague
smiled at the tidings that Betty Wyman would be there also. He had
observed that his brother's week-end visits always happened at places
where Betty was, and where Betty's granddaddy was not.

So Montague's man packed his grips, and Alice's maid her trunks; and
they rode with a private-car party to a remote Jersey suburb, and were
whirled in an auto up a broad shell road to a palace upon the top of a
mountain. Here lived the haughty Lester Todds, and scattered about on
the neighbouring hills, a set of the ultra-wealthy who had withdrawn to
this seclusion. They were exceedingly "classy"; they affected to regard
all the Society of the city with scorn, and had their own
all-the-year-round diversions--an open-air horse show in summer, and in
the fall fox-hunting in fancy uniforms.

The Lester Todds themselves were ardent pursuers of all varieties of
game, and in various clubs and private preserves they followed the
seasons, from Florida and North Carolina to Ontario, with occasional
side trips to Norway, and New Brunswick, and British Columbia. Here at
home they had a whole mountain of virgin forest, carefully preserved;
and in the Renaissance palace at the summit-which they carelessly
referred to as a "lodge"--you would find such articles de vertu as a
ten-thousand-dollar table with a set of two-thousand-dollar chairs, and
quite ordinary-looking rugs at ten and twenty thousand dollars
each.--All these prices you might ascertain without any difficulty at
all, because there were many newspaper articles describing the house to
be read in an album in the hall. On Saturday afternoons Mrs. Todd
welcomed the neighbours in a pastel grey reception-gown, the front of
which contained a peacock embroidered in silk, with jewels in every
feather, and a diamond solitaire for an eye; and in the evening there
was a dance, and she appeared in a gown with several hundred diamonds
sewn upon it, and received her guests upon a rug set with jewels to
match.

All together, Montague judged this the "fastest" set he had yet
encountered; they ate more and drank more and intrigued more openly. He
had been slowly acquiring the special lingo of Society, but these
people had so much more slang that he felt all lost again. A young lady
who was gossiping to him about thos