cared no more about anyone—­nor about anything under heaven, save to have a good time in their own harum-scarum ways.  In the old days one always received a neatly-written or engraved invitation to dinner, worded in impersonal and formal style; but the other day Mrs. Alden had found a message which had been taken from the telephone:  “Please come to dinner, but don’t come unless you can bring a man, or we’ll be thirteen at the table.”

And along with this went a perfectly incredible increase in luxury and extravagance.  “You are surprised at what you see here to-day,” said she—­“but take my word for it, if you were to come back five years later, you’d find all our present standards antiquated, and our present pace-makers sent to the rear.  You’d find new hotels and theatres opening, and food and clothing and furniture that cost twice as much as they cost now.  Not so long ago a private car was a luxury; now it’s as much a necessity as an opera-box or a private ball-room, and people who really count have private trains.  I can remember when our girls wore pretty muslin gowns in summer, and sent them to wash; now they wear what they call lingerie gowns, dimity en princesse, with silk embroidery and real lace and ribbons, that cost a thousand dollars apiece and won’t wash.  Years ago when I gave a dinner, I invited a dozen friends, and my own chef cooked it and my own servants served it.  Now I have to pay my steward ten thousand a year, and nothing that I have is good enough.  I have to ask forty or fifty people, and I call in a caterer, and he brings everything of his own, and my servants go off and get drunk.  You used to get a good dinner for ten dollars a plate, and fifteen was something special; but now you hear of dinners that cost a thousand a plate!  And it’s not enough to have beautiful flowers on the table—­you have to have ‘scenery’; there must be a rural landscape for a background, and goldfish in the finger-bowls, and five thousand dollars’ worth of Florida orchids on the table, and floral favours of roses that cost a hundred and fifty dollars a dozen.  I attended a dinner at the Waldorf last year that had cost fifty thousand dollars; and when I ask those people to see me, I have to give them as good as I got.  The other day I paid a thousand dollars for a tablecloth!”

“Why do you do it?” asked Montague, abruptly.

“God knows,” said the other; “I don’t.  I sometimes wonder myself.  I guess it’s because I’ve nothing else to do.  It’s like the story they tell about my brother—­he was losing money in a gambling-place in Saratoga, and some one said to him, ’Davy, why do you go there—­don’t you know the game is crooked?’ ’Of course it’s crooked,’ said he, ‘but, damn it, it’s the only game in town!’”

“The pressure is more than anyone can stand,” said Mrs. Alden, after a moment’s thought.  “It’s like trying to swim against a current.  You have to float, and do what every one expects you to do—­your children and your friends and your servants and your tradespeople.  All the world is in a conspiracy against you.”