The thousands who had “done their bit,” and become impoverished in consequence, were many of them cursing the impetuosity which had led them to forget their own interests in their anxiety to help to avenge the outrages in Belgium and France, and to save their own country from possible disaster. On the other hand many thousands of men and women who before the war had been struggling small traders, now contemplated with a feeling of smug satisfaction their swollen bank balances, and, while thanking heaven there had been a war, began to adopt a style of living which, though it ill became them, gratified their vanity enormously. “I ’aven’t reelly decided if me boy shall go to Eton or to ’Arrow,” was the observation Captain Preston had overheard while inspecting cars at the motor exhibition one afternoon in late April, and the remark had made him metaphorically grind his teeth. For he detested the war profiteers as a race almost as deeply as he hated “conscientious” objectors. Indeed, since the war had ended he had regretted more than ever that the Huns had failed to land here. The London season was now beginning, and the traffic congestion in the streets was admitted by all to be greater than at any period before the war. Enormous cars blocked the main thoroughfares, sometimes for hours at a time, yet everywhere was talk of poverty among people of education and of culture, who a few years previously had been in good circumstances. And among the many rich people in the West End few now entertained more lavishly than Aloysius Stapleton and the man who seemed to be his shadow--young Archie La Planta. “Then you have decided that it shall be at the Albert Hall,” Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson said as she thoughtfully blew a cloud of smoke towards the ceiling, “and you want me to act as hostess? Well, I won’t.” “You won’t? But why not?” “It wouldn’t do, Louie,” she answered with decision, addressing Aloysius Stapleton, who, seated near her on a settee in the drawing-room in her house in Cavendish Square, had been discussing arrangements for a great _bal masqué_. “I really can’t see why; can you, Archie?” and he looked across at La Planta. “You wouldn’t,” Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson said dryly, before La Planta could reply. “I think men are the dullest things, I do really. Though our many ‘friends’ profess always to be so fond of us, and so pleased to see us, any number of the women hate me, if the truth were known.” “They are simply jealous.”