Her hair was far less elaborately coiffured and her toilette less magnificent than the toilettes of the women by whom she was surrounded.

Yet as he looked from his corner across the room at her, Hunterleys realised as he had realised instantly twelve years ago when he had first met her, that she was incomparable.
There was no other woman in the whole of that great restaurant with her air of quiet elegance; no other woman so faultless in the smaller details of her toilette and person.

Hunterleys watched with expressionless face but with anger growing in his heart, as he saw Draconmeyer bending towards her, accepting her suggestions about the dinner, laughing when she laughed, watching almost humbly for her pleasure or displeasure.

It was a cursed mischance which had brought him to Monte Carlo! Hunterleys hurried over his dinner, and without even going to his room for a hat or coat, walked across the square in the soft twilight of an unusually warm February evening and took a table outside the Cafe de Paris, where he ordered coffee.

Around him was a far more cosmopolitan crowd, increasing every moment in volume.