"She has dyed, therefore she is dead to me!" groaned Courtley, who was, as usual, in attendance on Lady Beauvayse. He added, plaintively: "It’s like—white-washing the Sphinx, or enamelling a first-class battle-cruiser in some fashionable colour. Why did you let her do it, my lady fair?" Lady Beauvayse retorted: "Am I Miss Saxham’s mother that I should meddle in her love-affairs?" "If I was acquainted with her mother," said Courtley, below his breath, "and thought the good lady would take my tip seriously, I’d step in and nip this affair in the bud. It’s no go, even if Miss Saxham thinks it is. It’s a dud. That German flying-chap is booked to marry a cousin; a Baroness Something von Wolfensbragen-Hirschenbuttel. I’ve seen it in the Berlin _Lokal Anzeiger_, and that’s inspired, a sort of Imperial Court Almanac. And even if it wasn’t true, there are reasons—" His kind grey eyes were worried, he tugged at his pointed black beard in a vexed way. "Take me seriously, Miladi, tell her what I’ve told you, before it’s too late!" "And bring on myself the fate of the interferer.... Couldn’t you—since you’re so anxious?" Lady Beauvayse began. "Not possible," said Courtley. "Too crushed with responsibilities. Got to brush up my seamanship, while my junior executive swots away in Docks at Chatham, fillin’ in the watch-bill and making out commissioning-cards." "You’ve got a ship, do you mean?" Courtley nodded. "They call her one at the Admiralty just by way of being funny. When they’ve scraped off the dirt enough to get at her, she may turn out to be a first-class protected cruiser. Twenty months out of commission—and mobilised for the Spithead Naval Review." "Ought one to be glad? ... Does it mean that we’re to congratulate you on promotion?" asked puzzled Lady Beauvayse. "Well," Courtley admitted cautiously, "when I’ve got my full-dress frock-coat and sword out of pawn, and hoisted my pennant and called on the post Commander-in-Chief—I shall be something between a Rear-Admiral and a Post Captain—or they’ll have told me wrong." "And the Review—what do you call it?" persisted Lady Beauvayse. "Can one go and see it—whenever it comes off?" "It’ll be big enough to see—with a stiffish pair of binkies," admitted Courtley in his gentlest manner; "and the newspapers seem to have arranged it for somewhere in the middle of the month. As to what you’re to call it—if you called it an Object Lesson on the biggest scale for the use of German Kultur Classes, perhaps you wouldn’t be very wide of the bull."