There is a young girl there, I believe, that he is in love with. I knew Boris would not divorce for nothing. He is going there to meet her.”

            Targatt could not disguise an impulse of indignation. Before investing his millions, was Boris not going to do anything for his family? Nadeja said she had thought of that too; but Boris said he had invested the money that morning, and of course there would be no interest coming in till the next quarter. And meanwhile he was so much in love that he had taken his passage for the following day on the Berengaria. Targatt thought that only natural, didn’t he?

            Targatt swallowed his ire, and said, yes, he supposed it was natural enough. After all, if the boy had found a young girl he could really love and respect, and if he had the money to marry her and settle down, no one could blame him for rushing off to press his suit. And Boris rushed.

            But meanwhile the elimination of two Kouradjines had not had the hoped-for effect of reducing the total number of the tribe. On the contrary, that total had risen; for suddenly three new members had appeared. One was an elderly and completely ruined Princess (a distant cousin, Nadeja explained) with whom old Kouradjine had decided to contract a tardy alliance, now that the rest of the family were provided for. (“He could do no less,” Katinka and Nadeja mysteriously agreed.) And the other, and more sensational, newcomers were two beautiful young creatures, known respectively to the tribe as Nick and Mouna, but whose difficulties at the passport office made it seem that there were legal doubts as to their remaining names. These difficulties, through Targatt’s efforts, were finally overcome and snatched from the jaws of Ellis Island, Nick and Mouna joyfully joined the party at another new restaurant, “The Transcaucasian”, which Nadeja had recently discovered.

            Targatt’s immensely enlarged experience of human affairs left him in little doubt as to the parentage of Nick and Mouna, and when Nadeja whispered to him one night (through the tumult of Boris’s late bath next door): “You see, poor Papa felt he could not longer fail to provide for them,” Targatt did not dream of asking why.

            But he now had no less than seven Kouradjines more or less dependent on him, and the next night he sat up late and did some figuring and thinking. Even to Nadeja he could not explain in blunt language the result of this vigil; but he said to her the following day: “What’s become of that flat of Bellamy’s that Katinka lived in before—”

            “Why, he gave the lease to Katinka as a wedding-present; but it seems that people are no more as rich as they were, and as it’s such a very handsome flat, and the rent is high, the tenants can no longer afford to keep it—”

            “Well,” said Targatt with sudden resolution, “tell your sister if she’ll make a twenty-five per cent cut on the rent I’ll take over the balance of the lease.”

            Nadeja gasped. “Oh, James, you are an angel! But what do you think you could then do with it?”

            Targatt threw back his shoulders. “Live in it,” he recklessly declared.

              

 

 V.
 
 

            It was the first time (except when he had married Nadeja) that he had ever been reckless; and there was no denying that he enjoyed the sensation. But he had not acted wholly for the sake of enjoyment; he had an ulterior idea. What that idea was he did not choose to communicate to any one at present. He merely asked Katinka, who, under the tuition of Mr. Bellamy’s experienced butler, had developed some rudimentary ideas of house-keeping, to provide Nadeja with proper servants, and try to teach her how to use them; and he then announced to Nadeja that he had made up his mind to do a little entertaining. He and Nadeja had already made a few fashionable acquaintances at the Bellamys’, and these they proceeded to invite to the new flat, and to feed with exotic food, and stimulate with abstruse cocktails. At these dinners Targatt’s new friends met the younger and lovelier of the Kouradjines: Paul, Olga, Nick and Mouna, and they always went away charmed with the encounter.

            Considerable expense was involved by this new way of life; and still more when Nadeja, at Targatt’s instigation, invited Olga, Nick and Mouna to come and live with them. Nadeja was overcome with gratitude at this suggestion; but her gratitude, like all her other emotions, was so exquisitely modulated that it fell on Targatt like the gentle dew from heaven, merely fostering in him a new growth of tenderness. But still Targatt did not explain himself. He had his idea, and knowing that Nadeja would not bother him with questions he sat back quietly and waited, though Wall Street was growing more and more unsettled, and there had been no further news of Boris, and Paul and Olga were still without a job.

            The Targatts’ little dinners, and Nadeja’s exclusive cocktail parties, began to be the rage in a set far above the Bellamys’. There were almost always one or two charming young Kouradjines present; but they were now so sought after in smartest Park Avenue and gayest Long Island that Targatt and Nadeja had to make sure of securing their presence beforehand, so there was never any danger of there being too many on the floor at once.

            On the contrary, there were occasions when they all simultaneously failed to appear; and on one of these evenings, Targatt, conscious that the party had not “come off’, was about to vent his irritation against the absent Serge, when Nadeja said gently: “I’m sorry Serge didn’t tell you. But I think he was married today to Mrs. Leeper.”

            “Mrs. Leeper? Not the Dazzle Tooth-Paste woman he met at the Bellamys’, who wanted him to decorate her ballroom?”

            “Yes; but I think she did not after all want him to decorate her ball-room. And so she has married him instead.”

            A year earlier Targatt would have had no word but an uncomprehending groan. But since then his education had proceeded by leaps and bounds, and now he simply said: “I see—” and turned back to his breakfast with a secret smile. He had received Serge’s tailor’s bill the day before, and had been rehearsing half the night what he was going to say to Serge when they met. But now he merely remarked: “That woman has a two million dollar income,” and thought to himself that the experiment with the flat was turning out better than he could have imagined. If Serge could be disposed of so easily there was no cause to despair of Paul or Olga. “Hasn’t Mrs. Leeper a nephew?” he asked Nadeja; who, as if she had read his thought, replied regretfully: “Yes; but I’m afraid he’s married.”

            “Oh, well—send Boris to talk to him!” Targatt jeered; and Nadeja, who never laughed, smiled a little and replied: “Boris too will soon be married.” She handed her husband the morning papers, which he had not yet had time to examine, and he read, in glowing headlines, the announcement of the marriage in London of Prince Boris Kouradjine, son of Prince Peter Kouradjine, hereditary sovereign of Daghestan, and Chamberlain at the court of his late Imperial Majesty the Czar Nicholas, to Miss Mamie Guggins of Rapid Rise, Oklahoma.