"Geoffrey Barrington is such a healthy barbarian," said a pale young man with a monocle; "if it had been a high-browed child of culture like you, Reggie, with a taste for exotic sensations, I should hardly have been surprised." "And if it had been you, Arthur," replied Reggie Forsyth of the Foreign Office, who was Barrington's best man, "I should have known at once that it was the twenty thousand a year which was the supreme attraction." There was a certain amount of Anglo-Indian sentiment afloat among the company, which condemned the marriage entirely as an outrage on decency. "What was Brandan dreaming of," snorted General Haslam, "to allow his son to marry a yellow native?" "Dreaming of the mortgage on the Brandan property, I expect, General," answered Lady Rushworth. "It's scandalous," foamed the General, "a fine young fellow, a fine officer, too! His career ruined for an undersized _geisha_!" "But think of the millions of _yens_ or _sens_ or whatever they are, with which she is going to re-gild the Brandan coronet!" "That wouldn't console me for a yellow baby with slit eyes," continued the General, his voice rising in debate as his custom was at the Senior. "Hush, General!" said his interlocutor, "we don't discuss such possibilities." "But everybody here must be thinking of them, except that unfortunate young man." "We never say what we are thinking, General; it would be too upsetting." "And we are to have a Japanese Lord Brandan, sitting in the House of Lords?" the General went on. "Yes, among the Jews, Turks, and Armenians, who are there already," Lady Rushworth answered, "an extra Oriental will never be noticed. It will only be another instance of the course of Empire taking its way Eastward." * * * * * In the Everington dining-room the wedding presents were displayed. It looked more like the interior of a Bond Street shop where every kind of _article de luxe_, useful and useless, was heaped in plenty. Perhaps the only gift which had cost less than twenty pounds was Lady Everington's own offering, a photograph of herself in a plain silver frame, her customary present when one of her protégées was married under her immediate auspices.