Minna held a reception every Tuesday night at the Casa Benedetta. At first, Mrs. Delamere had tried to put her in the way of knowing good people. She had worked and intrigued most sedulously, and had been successful in inducing a certain set to take up her charge. But seeing Minna play recklessly with all kinds of fire, they dropped her, out of regard for their own fingers. Minna called them Tartuffes and Pecksniffs, uttering scornful doubts as to the honour of the men and the chastity of the women, whereupon Mrs. Delamere shrugged her shoulders and began to experiment upon the next strata of society. These, by turns, refusing to support Minna, she had come upon the riff-raff. And the riff-raff of Monte Carlo is a very curious and heterogeneous formation. No one knows its past or its future. The men have perfect manners, the women perfect complexions. The ones are worth the others. Minna’s receptions were brilliant enough. They were distinguished by animated conversation, excellent music, and irreproachable champagne. But to the stolid Philistine perception of Gerard Merriam there was an indefinable air of something wrong, such as strikes a guest at a perfectly well-conducted gathering at an expensive private lunatic asylum. When the ladies of the house were engaged with their guests, he lounged, hands in pockets, by the door leading on to the loggia, and surveyed the scene stonily. They were a damned lot, he murmured to himself; and added a couple of uncompromising Saxon vocables indicating the respective categories under which the men and women fell. Disrepute, as practised by foreigners, is a tawdry and contemptible thing in respectable though immoral British eyes. Thus he stood one Tuesday evening some three weeks after his meeting with Minna. The room was brilliantly lighted. In a corner sat an eager crowd around a little roulette-table. On divans and easy chairs the remainder of the company laughed and chatted. Minna was the centre of a little group of men, two bald, scrupulously attired, wearing ribbons in their button-holes. One was telling a story. By the guffaws that followed, and by the way in which Minna held her fan before her face, Gerard guessed its nature. He glowered at her. As French was spoken, which he understood very badly, he felt an added sense of outrage. A stout lady in mauve and rubies left the roulette and came over to Minna. “Present to me your tame bear, my dear,” she said in a shrill falsetto. “He is sulking because no one is making him dance.” Minna laughed, glanced at Gerard and met his lowering look. Then she bit her lip. It was ridiculous for a man to behave so foolishly. She rose; resigned her seat to the lady, and walked with her slow, languid step to Gerard. “Madame Raborski is dying to make your acquaintance.” “It would be a good thing to let her die,” said Gerard. “Well, she will soon. Grant her this last favour.” Annoyance screwed his features. “I can’t talk inanities to rouged women,” he said.