“I will recommend her to your favour,” said Montague. “I have been telling her about you.”
“What have you told her?” asked Mrs. Billy, serenely,—“that I win too much money at bridge, and drink Scotch at dinner?” Then, seeing Montague blush furiously, she laughed. “I know it is true. I have caught you thinking it half a dozen times.”
And she reached out for the decanter which the butler had just placed in front of her, and proceeded to help herself to her opening glass.
Montague told her all about Lucy; and, in the meantime, he watched the latter, who sat near the centre of the table, talking with Stanley Ryder. Montague had played bridge with this man once or twice at Mrs. Winnie's, and he thought to himself that Lucy could hardly have met a man who would embody in himself more of the fascinations of the Metropolis. Ryder was president of the Gotham Trust Company, an institution whose magnificent marble front was one of the sights of Fifth Avenue. He was a man a trifle under fifty, tall and distinguished-looking, with an iron-grey mustache, and the manners of a diplomat. He was not only a banker, he was also a man of culture; he had run away to sea in his youth, and he had travelled in every country of the world. He was also a bit of an author, in an amateur way, and if there was any book which he had not dipped into, it was not a book of which one would be apt to hear in Society. He could talk upon any subject, and a hostess who could secure Stanley Ryder for one of her dinner-parties generally counted upon a success. “He doesn't go out much, these busy days,” said Mrs. 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.
“You met an interesting man,” he said, when they had got settled in the carriage.
“One of the most extraordinary men I ever met,” said Lucy, quickly. “I wish that you would tell me about him. Do you know him well?”