"Well, I'll stop a bit anyway and get my feet warm. I hope she doesn't come. She is a good deal of a wet blanket, you must admit." "Wet blankets," began the Count argumentatively, and then, catching a glance from the Marchioness, cleared his throat, blew his nose, and mumbled something about poor people who had no blankets at all, God help them on such a night as this. Lady Jane had turned away from the group and was idly turning the leaves of the _Illustrated London News_. The smallest intelligence would have grasped the fact that Mrs. Priestly-Duff was not a genial soul. "Who else is coming?" she demanded, fixing the little hostess with the stare that had just been removed from the back of Lady Jane's head. Cricklewick answered from the doorway. "Lord Temple. Baron--ahem!--Whiskers--eh? Baron Wissmer. Prince Waldemar de Bosky. Count Wilhelm Frederick Von Blitzen." Four young men advanced upon the Marchioness, Lord Temple in the van. He was a tall, good-looking chap, with light brown hair that curled slightly above the ears, and eyes that danced. "This, my dear Marchioness, is my friend, Baron Wissmer," he said, after bending low over her hand. The Baron, whose broad hands were encased in immaculate white gloves that failed by a wide margin to button across his powerful wrists, smiled sheepishly as he enveloped her fingers in his huge palm. "It is good of you to let me come, Marchioness," he said awkwardly, a deep flush spreading over his sea-tanned face. "If I manage to deport myself like the bull in the china shop, pray lay it to clumsiness and not to ignorance. It has been a very long time since I touched the hand of a Marchioness." "Small people, like myself, may well afford to be kind and forgiving to giants," said she, smiling. "Dear me, how huge you are." "I was once in the Emperor's Guard," said he, straightening his figure to its full six feet and a half. "The Blue Hussars. I may add with pride that I was not so horribly clumsy in regimentals. After all, it is the clothes that makes the man." He smiled as he looked himself over. "I shall not be at all offended or even embarrassed if you say 'goodness, how you have grown!'" "The best tailor in London made that suit of clothes," said Lord Temple, surveying his friend with an appraising eye. Out of the corner of the same eye he explored the region beyond the group that now clustered about the hostess. Evidently he discovered what he was looking for. Leaving the Baron high and dry, he skirted the edge of the group and, with beaming face, came to Lady Jane. "My family is of Vienna," the Baron was saying to the Marchioness, "but of late years I have called Constantinople my home." "I understand," said she gently. She asked no other question, but, favouring him with a kindly smile, turned her attention to the men who lurked insignificantly in the shadow of his vast bulk.