for a stroll with him; then Montague asked for light upon Miss
Hegan's remark.

"What she said is perfectly true," replied the Major; "only it riled
Betty. There's many a gallant dame cruising the social seas who has
stowed her old relatives out of sight in the hold."

"What's the matter with old Simpkins?" asked tho other.

"Just a queer boy," was the reply. "He has a big pile, and his one
joy in life is the divine Yvette. It is really he who 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 mot 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