Then Mrs. Cicero B. Dace sat down and thought again, lighting upon the famous idea of the auction ball, in which a real English Duke acted as auctioneer, and before each dance put up the ladies for auction, to be bid for by the men who wished to be their partners. But Amelie swiftly sent for Arthur Bolney Ross, and he and a friend of hers, who was backing her in this struggle for sovereignty, continued to bid for her for so long that, out of sinister compassion for her hostess, she stepped down from the rostrum and refused to dance with either, for fear that there should be no more dancing for anybody. This completely spoiled the success of the auction ball, and while Mrs. Cicero B. Dace was still staggering from its failure, Amelie annihilated her altogether by giving her inimitable glacier ball on the hottest night of the year. A refrigerating apparatus was rigged up on the walls of her ballroom, and their entire surface thickly coated with real ice. Glass channels, fringed with blue gentians, were made round the margin of the floor, to carry off the melting water, while accomplished members of the band yodelled at intervals to carry out the Swiss illusion. She and the auctioneer Duke--whom she had captured from under the nose of Mrs. Cicero B. Dace--dressed in knickerbockers, with a rope round his shoulder and an ice-axe in his hand, led the cotillion, and Mrs. Cicero B. Dace, having in vain tried to point out that the gentians were three parts artificial flowers, retired at 1 A.M. in floods of tears. Such were Amelie Ross’s social achievements when, unlike Alexander the Great, she bethought herself that there were more worlds to conquer, and decided to extend her dominions over England. Her godmother, of course, knew her history, having, indeed, assisted at the history she had already made, and on the night of her arrival at the Ritz Hotel, dined with her there in her charming room looking over the Green Park, before going with her to her box at the opera. As regards this first appearance of her god-daughter, Violet Brackenbury had laid her plans very carefully, and explained them as they dined. “I have asked nobody else at all, dear Amelie,” she said, “because I want everybody to be wild to find out who you are, and nobody will be able to say. Curiosity is the best sauce of all.” Amelie became thoroughly American for a moment. “My!” she said. “Don’t you mean that your folk over here haven’t seen hundreds and hundreds of pictures of me in the papers?”