She shook herself free of the man and looked wrathfully up at the dim figure. “I forgot you’d have your nurse handy, Michael,” she jeered. “Good night, dear,” said the voice from the balcony and to her intense annoyance she felt an extraordinary sensation wholly new to her, but which with her quick woman’s wit she correctly diagnosed, as she hurried angrily along the street. For Kate Westhanger had blushed for the first time in her life. CHAPTER VII. THE PRINCESS BACHEFFSKI--BEAUTIFULLY DRESSED Lord Flanborough gave a dinner party. He was a methodical man and invariably made his arrangements a long time in advance, and he was not unnaturally annoyed, when, at the eleventh hour, his daughter suggested a change in the plans. “My dear Moya,” he said testily, “don’t be absurd. Surely after what has passed--after his extraordinary attitude--” “Oh, daddy, what nonsense!” said the girl. “Michael is really a good sort and he will be amusing. I really cannot sit out a dinner with all those boring people, and if you don’t invite him, I shall have a headache.” “But, my dear,” protested her father, “Sir Ralph will be quite entertainment enough, surely?” “Sir Ralph is the biggest bore of all,” she said calmly. “Please let me have my way.” So to his surprise and amusement Michael received an invitation to dinner, couched in such gracious terms that he formed the wholly incorrect impression that some other guest had failed Moya and that he was being called in to relieve her of the responsibility for thirteen people sitting at table. It was even a more dreary dinner-party than Moya had imagined. Sir Ralph Sapson was amusing in his own way, but his own way was not Moya’s way. He was a stout, handsome, young man on the right side of thirty, immensely wealthy and, according to her father, immensely capable. Though there had been no definite arrangement it was understood, mainly by Lord Flanborough, that Sir Ralph desired a closer association with the Flanborough family than his directorships gave him. The remainder of the guests were even less entertaining than Sir Ralph. There were three other members of the peerage. Old Lord Katstock who was a political lord who had once occupied a position as under-secretary in some forgotten administration, the Marquis of Cheddar who was a sporting lord and had theories on the Bruce Low system of breeding, Lord Dumburton who was a soldier lord, very poor and very wicked, unless rumour lied, and an assortment of directors which included Mr. Reginald Boltover who recognized Michael with a guilty start and took no interest whatever in his dinner but waited with bated breath for Michael to reveal his guilty secret. There were two or three ladies who gave Michael the impression that they had been dipped in diamonds by their herculean maids, there was a thin, dowdily dressed lady with a hooked nose. (“Has the Duchess borrowed anything, Moya?” said Michael under his breath.