The chapter opens with Selden in Monte Carlo. He is accompanying the Stepneys, the Brys, Lord Hubert Dacey, and Carry. Selden is informed that Lily is also in Europe, where she is vacationing with the Dorsets, and that she has been causing a mild sensation. Carry tells Selden that Lily appears 10 years younger, and that she has become a favorite companion of the Crown Princess of Macedonia. These revelations awaken Selden’s hurt feelings over Lily, which surprises him as he believed he had recovered from his feelings of unrequited affection.
Carry and Selden go for a walk together, and she tells Selden that Lily once had prospects to marry a rich Italian prince during a visit to Europe five years earlier. She reveals that marriage documents were being prepared between the prince and Mrs. Peniston when Lily began flirting with the prince’s stepson. Carry further gossips that Lily’s current visit to Europe was prompted by Bertha’s desire to have Lily distract Dorset while Bertha carried on a flirtation with Ned Silverton. Shocked and dismayed by the candid nature of the conversation, Selden excuses himself.
Upon catching the train back to Nice, Selden reemphasizes his resolve to avoid contact with Lily. As he boards the train, however, he is confronted by Lily, who is accompanying the Dorsets, Silverton, and Dacey to Nice in order to dine with the Duchess of Beltshire. He notices that Carry’s assessment that Lily’s beauty had blossomed while in Europe is correct.
In Nice, Silverton tells Selden that the trip to Nice was prompted by Lily’s manipulation of Dorset. This manipulation, he tells Selden, was performed in open view of Bertha, who refused to hear any ill words against Lily. Silverton confides to Selden, however, that such actions could not help but injure Bertha’s pride. In the meantime, Bertha’s flirtation with Silverton reaches its apex when Selden observes the pair hailing a carriage for what the reader can assume will be a romantic tryst.
