rbingly to counterbalance the secrets that Charlie was withholding.

On the present occasion he saw little of the Grand Babylon, for as soon
as he mentioned his son's name to the nonchalant official behind the
enquiry counter the official changed like lightning into an obsequious
courtier, and Charles's family was put in charge of a hovering attendant
boy, who escorted it in a lift and along a mile of corridors, and
Charlie's family was kept waiting at a door until the voice of Charlie
permitted the boy to open the door. A rather large parlour set with a
table for five; a magnificent view from the window of a huge
white-bricked wall and scores of chimney pots and electric wires, and a
moving grey sky above! Charlie, too, was unsuccessfully pretending not
to be nervous.

"Hullo, kid!" he greeted his sister.

"Hullo yourself," responded Sissie.

They shook hands. (They very rarely kissed. However, Charlie kissed his
mother. Even he would not have dared not to kiss her.)

"Mater," said he, "let me introduce you to Lady Massulam."

Lady Massulam had been standing in the window. She came forward with a
pleasant, restrained smile and made the acquaintance of Charlie's
family; but she was not talkative. Her presence, coming as a terrific
surprise to the ladies of the Prohack family, and as a fairly powerful
surprise to Mr. Prohack, completed the general constraint. Mrs. Prohack
indeed was somewhat intimidated by it. Mrs. Prohack's knowledge of Lady
Massulam was derived exclusively from _The Daily Picture_, where her
portrait was constantly appearing, on all sorts of pretexts, and where
she was described as a leader of London society. Mr. Prohack knew of her
as a woman credited with great feats of war-work, and also with a
certain real talent for organisation; further, he had heard that she had
a gift for high finance, and exercised it not without profit. As she
happened to be French by birth, no steady English person was seriously
upset by the fact that her matrimonial career was obscure, and as she
happened to be very rich everybody raised sceptical eyebrows at the
assertion that her husband (a knight) was dead; for _The Daily Picture_
implanted daily in the minds of millions of readers the grand truth that
to the very rich nothing can happen simply. The whole _Daily Picture_
world was aware that of late she had lived at the Grand Babylon Hotel in
permanence. That world would not have recognised her from her published
p