His Highness beamed affectionately upon Ancram. There was, at all events, nothing but flattery in being taken by the elbow by a Chief Secretary. “Certainlie,” he replied—“the verrie last”; and he laughed the unctuous, irresponsible laugh of a maharajah, which is accompanied by the twinkling of pendant emeralds and the shaking of personal rotundities which cannot be indicated. Sir William Scott folded his arms and refolded them, balanced himself once or twice on the soles of his shoes, pushed out his under-lip, and retreated in the gradual and surprised way which would naturally be adopted by the Foreign Department when it felt itself left out of the conversation. The Maharajah stood about uneasily on one leg for a moment, and then with a hasty double salaam he too waddled away. Mrs. Church glanced after his retreating figure—it was almost a perfect oval—with lips prettily composed to seemly gravity. Then, as her eyes met Ancram’s, she laughed like a schoolgirl. “Oh,” she said, “go away! I mustn’t talk to you. I shall be forgetting my part.” “You are doing it well. Lady Spence, at this stage of the proceedings, was always surrounded by bank-clerks and policemen. I do not observe a member of either of those interesting species,” he said, glancing round through his eyeglass, “within twenty yards. On the contrary, an expectant Member of Council on the nearest sofa, the Commander-in-Chief hovering in the middle distance, and a fringe of Departmental Heads on the horizon.” “I do not see any of them,” she laughed, looking directly at Ancram. “We are going to sit down, you and I, and talk for four or six minutes, as the last baboo said who implored an interview with my husband”; and Mrs. Church sank, with just a perceptible turning of her shoulder upon the world, into the nearest armchair. It was a wide gilded arm-chair, cushioned in deep yellow silk. Ancram thought, as she crossed her feet and leaned her head against the back of it, that the effect was delicious. “And you really think I am doing it well!” she said. “I have been dying to know. I really dallied for a time with the idea of asking one of the aides-de-camp. But as a matter of fact,” she said confidentially, “though I order them about most callously, I am still horribly afraid of the aides-de-camp—in uniform, on duty.” “And in flannels, off duty?” “In flannels, off duty, I make them almond toffee and they tell me their love affairs. I am their sisterly mother and their cousinly aunt. We even have games of ball.” “They are nice boys,” he said, with a sigh of resignation: “I daresay they deserve it.” There was an instant’s silence of good fellowship, and then she moved her foot a little, so that a breadth of the heliotrope velvet took on a paler light. “Yes,” he nodded, “it is quite—regal.” She laughed, flushing a little. “Really! That’s not altogether correct. It ought to be only officiating. But I can’t tell you how delicious it is to be _obliged_ to wear pretty gowns.”