“And Hachette, the new French third secretary, told us in the dressing-room about a letter he had got from his mother in Paris--terribly strict old lady. She said, ‘You have written me about going to dinners where no American men are present. You are deceiving your old mother. It is impossible that persons such as you describe us giving those dinners should not know any respectable American men. At all events, do not bring me back a daughter-in-law who has no acquaintance among respectable men in her own country’--haw! haw! haw!” A flood of colour poured into the faces of Eleanor Baldwin and Mrs. Hill-Smith. The Ambassador’s chronic grin had become a little broader; Sir Mark le Poer was tugging at his moustache. That impossible person, Castlestuart-Stuart, was haw-hawing with the keenest enjoyment. Constance Maitland felt that it was time to come to the rescue of her country even at the sacrifice of her country-women--so, smiling openly, she said to the too truthful Castlestuart-Stuart: “I can’t blame you for laughing--it makes all the initiated laugh. But you must see for yourself that it is only the newest of the new who do such things. All people new to society do strange things.” “Never saw it done anywhere before, ’pon my soul,” replied this incorrigible Briton. “We have our new people at home--tea, whiskey, drapery, and furniture shops--and rawer than you can think--but they wouldn’t dare--haw, haw! to give a dinner without an Englishman at it!” Constance bit her lip--Castlestuart-Stuart was telling the truth, and there was no gainsaying it; nor could she offer any fuller explanation than she had already given. Mrs. Hill-Smith and Eleanor Baldwin were glaring at her, but Constance remained calm and unmoved. Then from a most unexpected quarter came a terrible complication. Mince Pie Mulligan, having been frozen out by the Secretary of State and by Mr. James Brentwood Baldwin, had been jammed by the crowd almost in Eleanor Baldwin’s arms, without the least resistance on his part, and had been an open-mouthed and delighted listener to Castlestuart-Stuart’s candid words. At the first break he proceeded to improve his opportunities by hurling himself into the conversation, and looking straight into Eleanor’s eyes the Senator bawled to Castlestuart-Stuart: “To give such heathenish dinners as you say, people have got not only to be new, but they have got to be blamed fools besides!”