He realised that he detested the Saxham girl, one of Margot’s chosen Club intimates, more fervently than even Tota Stannus or Joan Delabrand; more thoroughly than Rhona Helvellyn; only little less heartily than he hated Cynthia Charterhouse. Big, bold, galumphing, provocative—in fact, so much IT that you couldn’t overlook her—he found her more unpleasantly attractive than usual, in a bodice that was no more than a fold of shimmering orange stuff above the waist—tossing the _panache_ of ospreys that startlingly crowned her, offering up her _persistant_ illusion perfumes for the delectation of the appreciative male. Only look at her, ready to climb into her neighbour’s pocket. Leaning her round white elbows on the guipure table-cloth, half-shutting those long greeny-brown Egyptian eyes of her, wreathing her long thick white neck to send a daring challenge into the face of the laughing man. A big man, bright red-haired, blue-eyed, and broad-chested, showing every shining tooth in his handsome grinning head.... "She’s _screaming_, isn’t she, dear Lady Beau?" Thus the Saxham to her employer, friend, and ally, across the silver bowls of Rayon d’Or roses, her naked shoulder brushing the coat-sleeve of her neighbour, the big rufous man. And Lady Beau gushed back: "In marvellous form to-night.... Don’t you think so, Count? Do agree with us!" and the big man agreed, with the accent of the German Fatherland: "She is _kolossal_.... _Wunderlich_! ..." "Who’s the German next me—big beggar Lady Beau and Miss Saxham are gushing over?" Franky presently telegraphed to Courtley behind the charming American’s accommodating back. And Courtley signalled in reply: "Von Herrnung. German Count of sorts—Engineer and Flieger officer. Son of an Imperial Councillor, and cousin to Princess Willy of Kiekower Oestern—really rather an interestin’ beast in his way. Made a one-stop flight to Paris from Hanover in April, with an Albatros biplane. Previously won an event in the Prinz Heinrich Circuit Competition." He added: "We can’t decently blink their progress in military aviation. It’s one o’ them there fax which the brass-hats at the War Office pretend to regard as all my eye. Yet they know the Fatherland—or if they don’t they oughter! Good-lookin’ chap this. Not over thirty, I should guess him. Always dodging in and out of the German Embassy. The Goblin frightful nuts on him.... Goin’ to steer him through the next London Season—suppose he’s lookin’ out for a moneyed wife!" "Hope he gets her!" Franky mentally commented. But he looked with new interest at his big blond German neighbour, mentally calculating that with all that bone, brawn, and muscle, von Herrnung couldn’t tip the scale at less than sixteen stone.