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MRS. HAMILL was entertaining. All her guests were men, and at first glance there appeared to be hundreds of them, so wholly did they fill her house with tailored black and starched white and polished leather. As a matter of fact they numbered sixty. Bennett, the butler, had counted them, afterward sidling to his mistress to whisper the total. "Sixty tonight, Madam." And Mrs. Hamill had inclined her shingle-bobbed silver head in satisfaction. Sixty was quite as it should be.

They had arrived between the hours of ten and twelve, these guests, in a succession of motor cars sleek and correct and opulent, like themselves. They would depart again at dawn. In the meantime, rather incredible sums of money were changing hands across the little green baize tables in the card room, and above the long checkerboarded tables with clicking wheels sunk in their ends that lined the great salon. And of the rather incredible sums, a goodly portion would come to permanent rest at last in the soft small hands of Madelaine Hamill. Of course. One does not convert one's home into a casino of Chance for nothing.

Hour after hour she moved through the crowded rooms, smiling, greeting, exchanging badinage, seeing to it that highball glasses were often refilled and that matches were plentiful, noting mechanically whose