"Poor Count Tido!" Something rattled in the Goblin’s meagre throat as though she had accidentally swallowed some of her pearls. "That dreadful report in _The Wire_ made the Franzenbad treatment disagree with me horribly! To be drowned in that commonplace North Sea crossing, upon the very eve of realising the one ambition of his life! For he hated us so thoroughly! His Anglophobia was a perfect obsession. Poor dear Tido! One might call it a wasted career!" The speaker dried a tear and continued: "His family will be frantic. You know he was to have been married in October! Baroness Kriemhilde von Wolfensbragen-Hirschenbuttel. Immensely rich! Her father has large interests in the pearl-fisheries of German New Guinea. Her betrothal gift, a superb black and white pearl, the Count always wore as a mascot. Poor Baroness! She will be inconsolable. Marriage means the first draught of real freedom to young German girls!" Mrs. Charterhouse said in her sweetly venomous way: "Miss Saxham bears up—under the circumstances!" "Under what circumstances, might one presume to ask?" Then, reading aright the ambiguous smile of Mrs. Charterhouse, the Goblin rattled out her characteristic laugh: "What absurdity! You refer to a mere dinner-table flirtation in Paris. The mere _rapprochement_ of _atomes crochus_! Miss Saxham and Lady Beauvayse dined with us on the night of the Grand Prix. Poor Tido was certainly struck with her. I remember he talked about her eyes and figure afterwards. But her hair being so black and growing so heavily—did not please him. He found the effect—I think his term was—’too crepuscular.’" "Ah! You throw a ray," said Mrs. Charterhouse in that sugared way of hers, "on a mystery that has intrigued me. Now I know why Miss Saxham went to the Atelier Wiber in the Rue de la Paix and got her crepuscular tresses changed to terra-cotta!" "_Not_ saffron? Now," said Lady Wastwood, pensively tilting her own green-gold head and elevating her arched black eyebrows, "I should have called that shade saffron or tumeric. Who do you suppose footed the bill for the process? The wretch Wiber simply won’t look at you under four hundred and fifty francs!" "Perhaps Vivie Beauvayse—" suggested Mrs. Charterhouse. "I think not. Vivie preferred the crepuscular effect. It contrasted capitally with her own style of colouring. You must have noticed, they are seldom seen going about together as they used. Dear Lady Wathe, do you feel faint? Can I get you anything?" For something had clicked behind the Goblin’s pearls, and she had suddenly stiffened in her seat. The superb figure of Patrine Saxham had entered by the swing-doors leading from the vestibule followed by a tall, broad-shouldered young man in loose grey tweeds, whose left sleeve displayed a band of black significantly new.