“For what, Mr. Deyes? Do tell us,” Lady Peggy implored.
“For bridge!” he declared. “For giving weary married people the opportunity for divorce, and as an asylum from one’s creditors.”
Wilhelmina shook her head as she gathered up her cards.
“You are not at your best to-day, Gilbert,” she said. “The allusion to creditors is prehistoric! No one has them nowadays. Society is such a hop-scotch affair that our coffers are never empty.”
“What a Utopian sentiment!” Lady Peggy murmured.
“We can’t agree, can we?” Deyes whispered in her ear.
“You! Why they say that you are worth a million,” she protested.
“If I am I remain poor, for I cannot spend it,” he declared.
“Why not?” his hostess asked him from across the table.
“Because,” he answered, “I am cursed with a single vice, trailing its way through a labyrinth of virtues. I am a miser!”