ridiculous to her than he was, and were less in harmony with
everything she had previously known. Their work, their intellectual
occupations, their cleverness and aspirations were out of her world
altogether. The young man-about-town who had nothing to do but amuse
himself, who was always "knocking about," as he said, whose business was
pleasure, was the kind of being with whom she was acquainted. She had no
understanding of the other kind. He who had been her comrade in the
country, whose society had amused her there, and for whom she had a sort
of half-condescending affection, was droll to her beyond measure, with
his ambitions and great ideas as to what he was to do. He, too, made her
laugh; but not as Montjoie did. She laughed, though this would have
immeasurably surprised Jock, with much less sympathy than she had with
the other, upon whom he looked with so much contempt. They were both
silly to Bice,--silly as, in her strange experience, she thought it
usual and natural for men to be,--but Montjoie's manner of being silly
was more congenial to her than the other. He was more in tune with the
life she had known. Hamburg, Baden, Wiesbaden, and all the other Bads,
even Monaco, would have suited Montjoie well enough. The trade of
pleasure-making has its affinities like every other, and a tramp on his
way from fair to fair is more _en rapport_ with a duke than the world
dreams of. Thus Bice found that the young English marquis, with more
money than he knew how to spend, was far more like the elegant
adventurer living on his wits, than all those intervening classes of
society, to whom life is a more serious, and certainly a much less
festive and costly affair. She understood him far better. And instead of
being, as Lucy thought, a sacrifice, an unfortunate victim sold to a
loveless marriage for the money and the advantages it would bring, Bice
went on very gaily, her heart as unmoved as possible, to what she felt
to be a most congenial fate.

And they all waited for the 26th and the ball with growing excitement.
It would decide many matters. It would settle what was to be the
character of the Contessa's campaign. It might reintroduce her into
society under better auspices than ever, or it might--but there was no
need to foretell anything unpleasant. And very likely it would conclude
at the same source as it began, Bice's triumph--a _debutante_ who was
already the affianced bride of the young Marquis of Montjoie, the
gr