The night was warm, and Holcombe was tired after his rambles, and so
he sank back in the low wicker chair contentedly enough, and when the
first cool drink was finished he clapped his hands for another, and
then another, while the two men sat at the table beside him and
avoided such topics as would be unfair to any of them.

"And yet," said Holcombe, after the first half-hour had passed, "there
must be a few agreeable people here. I am sure I saw some very
nice-looking women to-day coming in from the fox-hunt. And very well
gotten up, too, in Karki habits. And the men were handsome,
decent-looking chaps--Englishmen, I think."

"Who does he mean? Were you at the meet to-day?" asked Carroll.

The Tammany chieftain said no, that he did not ride--not after foxes,
in any event. "But I saw Mrs. Hornby and her sister coming back," he
said. "They had on those linen habits."

"Well, now, there's a woman who illustrates just what I have been
saying," continued Carroll. "You picked her out as a self-respecting,
nice-looking girl--and so she is--but she wouldn't like to have to
tell all she knows. No, they are all pretty much alike. They wear
low-neck frocks, and the men put on evening dress for dinner, and they
ride after foxes, and they drop in to five-o'clock tea, and they all
play that they're a lot of gilded saints, and it's one of the rules of
the game that you must believe in the next man, so that he will
believe in you. I'm breaking the rules myself now, because I say
'they' when I ought to say 'we.' We're none of us here for our health,
Holcombe, but it pleases us to pretend we are. It's a sort of give and
take. We all sit around at dinner-parties and smile and chatter, and