Dinner was not yet announced: the conversation, easy and elegant, embraced the topics of the day: while the more youthful wandered, as though aimlessly, towards the far corners of the spacious drawing-room, where stood the busts of notable men by Epstein and Mestrovic. Now Lady Surplice never would have cocktails served in her house since a friend of hers, an honourary _attaché_ at the Bulgarian Legation, had succumbed to a ptomaine poisoning gotten from swallowing a cherry in a Manhattan cocktail. But my lady’s butlers were wont, such is the ingenuity of the lower sort, to secrete cocktails behind the busts of notable men by Epstein and Mestrovic, thus killing two birds with one stone; for while, on the one hand, they satisfied the reasonable thirst of the company, they also, on the other hand, gave Lady Surplice much real pleasure in seeing how her friends were enamoured of the most advanced art of the day. Lady Surplice herself loved the most advanced art of the day. And the most advanced art of the day loved Lady Surplice. Playwrights, for instance, doted on her. One had put her into a play as a courtesan for money (1205 performances), one as a courtesan by temperament (2700 performances), another as a courtesan by environment (still running), and lastly another as a courtesan to pass the time. This last, however, was never produced, as the Lord Chamberlain had banned it on the ground that it was too cynical. However.... Imagine, said Dwight-Rankin, with what consternation Lady Surplice suddenly discovered that the company was thirteen in number! She was livid. She said: “It is the fault of that Dwight-Rankin man. I had forgotten that he had put me off at the last moment. That low, detestable man! How _rude_ people with two names can be! But what shall we do? We cannot dine thirteen, and on Christmas Eve! Your Highness, what would you advise? I am quite unable, my dear Highness, to sit down thirteen at meat. I detest meat, but you know what I mean. It would quite destroy my luck.” “His Highness,” said Guy Godolphin Greville Hawke, 21st Viscount de Travest, “might very possibly prefer to have his luck completely destroyed; for the present luck of Royalty in Europe is, if I may say so, sickening.” Lord Marketharborough had been for some time examining the busts of notable men by Mestrovic and Epstein, and had therefore not heard what had gone before; but that did not deter him from asking one of those pertinent questions which came naturally to his fearless mind. “Since,” said the Lord Chancellor, “we are thirteen, are we a woman too many or a man? Let us first get that quite clear.”