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“Danford, are you not, like me, struck by the incongruity of all this?”

“My lord, to-morrow, after breakfast, I shall submit to you some of my observations on the subject of entertainments. Look at these women seated on chairs, these men bending over them. Their movements are without grace and their hair badly dressed; we cannot have any more of the Patrick Campbell style in our modern mythology. Besides, there are too many people here, and in this Edenic attire the less people you group together, the better the effect.”

“I agree with you, Dan; but for God’s sake let us leave this room—I see someone approaching the piano. Let us be off, I am dying with thirst.” They edged their way down the staircase, not without trouble, for the crowd was coming back from partaking of refreshment, and climbing up the stairs with the renewed vigour that champagne and sandwiches give to drawing-room visitors. As they jammed sideways through the dining-room door, Lionel frowned at the discomfort, and Dan, finding himself breast to breast with his pupil, murmured to him,—