So you might drive down the streets and point out the mansions and call the roll of the owners—­kings of oil and steel and railroads and mines!  Here everything was beauty and splendour.  Here were velvet lawns and gardens of rare flowers, and dancing and feasting and merriment.  It seemed very far from the sordid strife of commerce, from poverty and toil and death.  But Montague carried with him the sight that he had seen in the plate-mill, the misty blur about the whirling shaft, and the shrouded form upon the stretcher, dripping blood.

* * *

He was so fortunate as to meet Alice and her friends upon the street, and he drove with them to the bathing beach which Society had purchased and maintained for its own exclusive use.  The first person he saw here was Reggie Mann, who came and took possession of Alice.  Reggie would not swim himself, because he did not care to exhibit his spindle legs; he was watching with disapproving eye the antics of Harry Percy, his dearest rival.  Percy was a man about forty years of age, a cotillion-leader by profession; and he caused keen delight to the spectators upon the beach by wearing a monocle in the water.

They had lunch at the Casino, and then went for a sail in the Prentices’ new racing yacht.  It was estimated just at this time that there was thirty millions’ worth of steam and sailing pleasure-craft in Newport harbour, and the bay was a wonderful sight that afternoon.

They came back rather early, however, as Alice had an engagement for a drive at six o’clock, and it was necessary for her to change her costume before she went.  It was necessary to change it again before dinner, which was at eight o’clock; and Montague learned upon inquiry that it was customary to make five or six such changes during the day.  The great ladies of Society were adepts in this art, and prided themselves upon the perfect system which enabled them to accomplish it.

All of Montague’s New York acquaintances were here in their splendour:  Miss Yvette Simpkins, with her forty trunks of new Paris costumes; Mrs. Billy Alden, who had just launched an aristocratic and exclusive bridge-club for ladies; Mrs. Winnie Duval, who had created a sensation by the rumour of her intention to introduce the simple life at Newport; and Mrs. Vivie Patton, whose husband had committed suicide as the only means of separating her from her Count.

It chanced to be the evening of Mrs. Landis’s long-expected dinner-dance.  When you went to the Landis mansion, you drove directly into the building, which had a court so large that a coach and four could drive around it.  The entire ground floor was occupied by what were said to be the most elaborately equipped stables in the world.  Your horses vanished magically through sliding doors at one side, and your carriage at the other side, and in front of you was the entrance to the private apartments, with liveried flunkies standing in state.