one once said of her that she ordered a sack of potatoes with the
air of one who is making enquiry for a love-philtre.

"Do you see what colour the curtain is?" she asked Cicely, throwing a
note of intense meaning into her question.

Cicely turned quickly and looked at the drop-curtain.

"Rather a nice blue," she said.

"Alexandrine blue--my colour--the colour of hope," said Rhapsodie
impressively.

"It goes well with the general colour-scheme," said Cicely, feeling that
she was hardly rising to the occasion.

"Say, is it really true that His Majesty is coming?" asked the lively
American dowager. "I've put on my nooest frock and my best diamonds on
purpose, and I shall be mortified to death if he doesn't see them."

"There!" pouted Ronnie, "I felt certain you'd put them on for me."

"Why no, I should have put on rubies and orange opals for you. People
with our colour of hair always like barbaric display--"

"They don't," said Ronnie, "they have chaste cold tastes. You are
absolutely mistaken."

"Well, I think I ought to know!" protested the dowager; "I've lived
longer in the world than you have, anyway."

"Yes," said Ronnie with devastating truthfulness, "but my hair has been
this colour longer than yours has."

Peace was restored by the opportune arrival of a middle-aged man of blond
North-German type, with an expression of brutality on his rather stupid
face, who sat in the front of the box for a few minutes on a visit of
ceremony to Cicely. His appearance caused a slight buzz of recognition
among the audience, and if Yeovil had cared to make enquiry of his
neighbours he might have learned that this decorated and obviously
important personage was the redoubtable von Kwarl, artificer and shaper
of much of the statecraft for which other men got the public credit.

The orchestra played a selection from the "Gondola Girl," which was the
leading musical-comedy of the moment. Most of the audience, those in the
more expensive seats at any rate, heard the same airs two or three times
daily, at restaurant lunches, teas, dinners and suppers, and occasionally
in the Park; they were justified therefore in treating the music as a
background to slightly louder conversation than they had hitherto
indulged in. The music came to an end, episode number two in the
evening's entertainment was signalled, the curtain of Alexandrine blue
rolled heavily upward, and a troupe of performing wolves was presented to
the publ