Two months passed before I was invited to the lady's home in Mayfair and by that time, partly because I pretended to know the young Grand Duke, I was on a more intimate footing. I had learned that she had met him at a hunting party at the Earl of Crewes' shooting box in Shropshire. Later, she intimated that this was but their official meeting and that their acquaintance actually dated from a mountain trip she had taken to Switzerland, the universal playground of royalty traveling _incog_. I learned too that her heavy bridge gambling had cost her a lot of money. The information that the lady was in debt did not come easily. To obtain it, I had to work on her maid. Whenever the occasion arose, I made it my business to tip the maid liberally. I contrived to do a number of little things for her. Knowing the lady to be out, I called at the house one day and while pretending to be waiting for my hostess, I put some leading questions to the maid. I learned that her mistress was pressed for money. That was an opening worth working on. Thereafter I contrived to be present whenever there was a bridge party at the lady's. They are pretty high gamblers, those English society women, and I came to see that the lady was generally a heavy loser. It was my good fortune for her to lose to me one night. Now, it is the custom at these gatherings not to hand over cash; instead, the unlucky one pays with what corresponds to an "on demand note." I took her note that night and with others--the whereabouts of which I learned from the maid and which I indirectly purchased from the holders--I took all these to a notorious money-lender and made a deal with him. He was to take the notes and press the lady for payment, of course keeping my name out of it. It is obvious that, trying as I was to w in her confidence, I could not go myself and hold these obligations over her head. That same day the money-lender paid the lady a call. He paid her a good many other calls, harassing her, threatening legal action and driving her until she was almost to a state of nervous collapse. Well-placed sympathies soon made her talk and she burst out pettishly that she was in debt and that most of her acquaintances were in debt--nothing unusual in that set.