" Her room was the untidiest that Nellie had ever
seen, and the tea a picnic. Still, it was thrilling to have had tea with
a Russian Countess.... (Plots! Nihilism! Secret police! Marble
palaces!).... Those visitors' lists were breath-taking. Pages and pages
of them; scores of hotels, thousands of names, nearly all English--and
all people who came to Switzerland in winter, having naught else to do.
Denry and Nellie bathed in correctness as in a bath.
The only persons in the hotel with whom they did not "get on" nor "hit
it off" were a military party, chiefly named Clutterbuck, and presided
over by a Major Clutterbuck and his wife. They sat at a large table in a
corner--father, mother, several children, a sister-in-law, a sister, a
governess--eight heads in all; and while utterly polite they seemed to
draw a ring round themselves. They grumbled at the hotel; they played
bridge (then a newish game); and once, when Denry and the Countess
played with them (Denry being an adept card-player) for shilling points,
Denry overheard the sister-in-law say that she was sure Captain Deverax
wouldn't play for shilling points. This was the first rumour of the
existence of Captain Deverax; but afterwards Captain Deverax began to be
mentioned several times a day.
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