Billy. "But I told him about your friend."

Now and then the conversation at the table would become general, and
Montague noticed that it was always Ryder who led. His flashes of
wit shot back and forth across the table; and those who matched
themselves against him seldom failed to come off the worse. It was
an unscrupulous kind of wit, dazzling and dangerous. Ryder was the
type of man one met now and then in Society, who had adopted radical
ideas for the sake of being distinguished. It was a fine thing for a
man who had made a brilliant success in a certain social environment
to shatter in his conversation all the ideals and conventions of
that environment, and thus to reveal how little he really cared for
the success which he had won.

It was very entertaining at a dinner-party; but Montague thought to
himself with a smile how far was Stanley Ryder from the type of
person one imagined as the head of an enormous and flourishing bank.
When they had adjourned to the drawing-room, he capped the climax of
the incongruity by going to the piano and playing a movement from
some terrible Russian suite.

Afterwards Montague saw him stroll off to the conservatory with Lucy
Dupree. There were two people too many for bridge, and that was a
good excuse; but none the less Montague felt restless during the
hours that he sat at table and let Mrs. Billy win his money.

After the ordeal was over and the party had broken up, he found his
friend sitting by the side of the fountain in Mrs. Billy's
conservatory, gazing fixedly in front of her, while Ryder at her
side was talking.