“Then we shall meet Thursday night,” he said, when he had handed Yootha into the taxi and shut the door. “Cora is going to call for me in her car at ten o’clock, and we shall pick you up on our way to the ball.” CHAPTER XIII. BOX NUMBER THIRTEEN. Of all the balls that have been given at Albert Hall within the past ten or twelve years, none has approached in its splendor, or in the luxury of its appointment and setting “the pageant worthy of Ancient Rome,” as some of the newspapers termed it, which took place in July, 1919. The whole of the interior of the vast building had been painted and decorated in an amazingly artistic manner, and utterly regardless of expense. All the seasons were presented in turn in a gigantic panorama, which depicted also the most daring love scenes described in the well-known classics. True, a few London journals and many provincial papers clamored to know why so huge a sum should have been spent on “decking out” one great ball-room, seeing that the ball had been organized “ostensibly in aid of charity,” but the cavillers received no answer. Heckled on the point by a Parliamentary representative of advanced Socialistic views, Stapleton calmly replied that “if you set out to make money you must spend money to make it,” an argument which proved its soundness when the accounts came to be totaled up and an enormous sum was handed to charity. Long before the night every ticket had been sold. Nor could another be obtained for love or money. By midnight the immense circle of boxes sparkled with a blaze of diamonds, worn, on that occasion, not by decrepit dowagers, as is the case so often at the Opera, but for the most part by young and extremely beautiful women. Indeed, it was safe to say that literally everybody who was anybody attended at the Albert Hall that night, though as the faces of all were concealed by masks which they were at liberty to wear throughout the night if so inclined, even detectives would have been unable to say who was present and who absent had they been ordered to make a report. Preston’s party, which included Cora Hartsilver and Yootha Hagerston, Harry Hopford, George Blenkiron, and about a dozen more, occupied a box only six boxes away from Jessica Mervyn-Robertson’s. Her party, too, numbered about a dozen, and her first appearance in the hall created a sensation which few present that night are likely to forget. Her dress! In the first place, of what did it consist? Certainly of very little, but that little---- A great mottled snake with enormous eyes which, as the rays of the electroliers caught them, assumed chameleon tints, becoming now a jet black, now a sea green blending into different shades, now golden copper, now blood red.... That was the impression which first struck the beholder as Jessica came towards him.