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hand by raising it toward his lips and then dropping it. Maisie dressed for her parties with expensive care, and de Rham, who noticed such things, complimented her on the handsomeness of her pearl-encrusted bodice. Maisie, more used to business tycoons than French aristocrats, was charmed by his courtly manners. Whether entering a party, or a restaurant, or a theater, there was always someone present who whispered to someone else, “There’s Constantine de Rham.” In years past, when playboys were still in fashion, his escapades and exploits had filled the international gossip columns, but a fatal car crash outside of Paris a half dozen years earlier had ended his days as a romantic figure; his beautiful young companion, the daughter of a French duke, had gone through his car’s windshield when he was speeding home in the early hours of the morning from a ball at a country estate. It was a part of his story and always took precedence over the other dramatic circumstance of his life, the death of his wife, the immensely rich Consuelo Harcourt de Rham, Adele Harcourt’s daughter, who had died falling down the marble stairway of their house on Sutton Place, after returning home from a party she had not wanted to attend.
    “There’s Constantine de Rham,” said Edwina.
    “I know all about Constantine de Rham,” replied Gus.
    At Constantine de Rham’s side was a young woman dressed far too elaborately for a Maisie Verdurin dinner in a revealing gown of gold lamé, with diamonds in great quantity on her wrists, ears, neck, and bosom. Her blond hair was combed straight back and coiled silkily in a bun at the nape of her neck, giving her the look of the wife of a South American dictator.
    Maisie’s drawing room was now filled with guests. Waiters carried trays of drinks and hors d’oeuvres, and passage from one side of the room to the other, which seemed to be Constantine de Rham’s intention, necessitated a circuitous routing. Followed by his young companion, he edged his way sideways between Maisie’s white brocade sofa and the coffee table in front of it, murmuring charming apologies to Dolly De Longpre and a quartet of seated guests, like a person taking a seat in a theater after the curtain has gone up.
    Dolly De Longpre, glamorous and voluptuous, dimpled and pink-skinned, barely acknowledged Constantine de Rham and went on with her own conversation. “Seating can make or break a party,” she said. “And Maisie Verdurin has a genius for seating. She agonizes over her
placement
.”
    A painting by Monet of water lilies had been hung over Maisie’s fireplace only that afternoon, in anticipation of the arrival of the immensely rich art collector Elias Renthal, whom no one in New York yet knew, except Constantine de Rham, who had brought him to Maisie to start his collection. Reaching his goal, Constantine de Rham held his black-rimmed spectacles like a lorgnette and leaned toward the pink in the center of a water lily, as if it possessed scent. “Ah, ravishing,” he pronounced admiringly to Maisie about the painting, and she smiled modestly about her acquisition.
    “Isn’t the pink marvelous?” asked Maisie.
    “Like the inside of a seashell,” agreed de Rham.
    “It’s the pink that has so intrigued Elias Renthal’s new wife, you know. If he decides to buy it, it’s to be the color of the walls in the drawing room of the Renthals’ new apartment that they just bought from Matilda Clarke.”
    Constantine smiled a superior smile, including Maisie in on this joint superiority, over people like the Elias Renthals of the world, who looked on art as an extension of interior decoration. “What an impressive group you have gathered, Maisie,” he said, looking around the room.
    “Your friends the Renthals have still not appeared, and I don’t intend to wait for them when the butler announces dinner,” she replied, taking his arm and leading him around the crowded room to introduce him, knowing that, as