"How are you all?" she remarked languidly. "Shocking hostess, am I not?"

A fair-haired little woman turned away from the tea-table. She held a
chocolate eclair in one hand, and a cup of Russian tea in the other. Her
eyes were very dark, and her hair very yellow--and both were perfectly
and unexpectedly natural. Her real name was Lady Margaret Penshore, but
she was known to her intimates, and to the mysterious individuals who
write under a _nom-de-guerre_ in the society papers, as "Lady Peggy."

"A little casual perhaps, my dear Wilhelmina," she remarked. "Comes from
your association with Royalty, I suppose. Try one of your own caviare
sandwiches, if you want anything to eat. They're ripping."

Wilhelmina--she was one of the few women of her set with whose Christian
name no one had ever attempted to take any liberties--approached the
tea-table and studied its burden. There were a dozen different sorts of
sandwiches arranged in the most tempting form, hot-water dishes with
delicately browned tea-cakes simmering gently, thick cream in silver
jugs, tea and coffee, and in the background old China dishes piled with
freshly gathered strawberries and peaches and grapes, on which the bloom
still rested. On a smaller table were flasks of liqueurs and a spirit
decanter.

"Anyhow," she remarked, pouring herself out some tea, "I do feed you
people well. And as to being casual, I warned you that I never put in an
appearance before five."

A man in the background, long and lantern-faced, a man whose age it
would have been as impossible to guess as his character, opened and
closed his watch with a clink.

"Twenty minutes past," he remarked. "To be exact, twenty-two minutes
past."

His hostess turned and regarded him contemplatively.

"How painfully precise!" she remarked. "Somehow, it doesn't sound
convincing, though. Your watch is probably like your morals."

"What a flattering simile!" he murmured.

"Flattering?"

"It presupposes, at any rate, their existence," he explained. "It is
years since I was reminded of them."

Wilhelmina seated herself before an open card-table.

"No doubt," she answered. "You see I knew you when you were a boy.
Seriously," she continued, "I have been engaged with my agent for the
last half-hour--a most interesting person, I can assure you. There was
an agreement with one Philip Crooks concerning a farm, which he felt
compelled to read to me--every word of it! Come along and cut, all of
y