Since her rupture with Madame Wetme (both the King and Queen had refused to receive her), the money _ennuis_ of the Duchess had become increasingly acute. Tormented by tradespeople, dunned and bullied by creditors, menaced, mortified, insulted--an offer to “star” in the _rôle_ of _A Society Thief_ for the cinematograph had particularly shocked her--the inevitable hour to quit the Court so long foreseen had come. And now with her departure definitely determined upon, the Duchess experienced an insouciance of heart unknown to her assuredly for many a year. Replenishing her reticule with quite a welcome sheaf of the elegant little banknotes of Pisuerga, one thing only remained to do, and taking pen and paper, she addressed to the Editor of the _Intelligence_ the supreme announcement:--“_The Duchess of Varna has left for Dateland_.” Eight light words! But enough to set _tout_ Kairoulla in a rustle. “I only so regret I didn’t go sooner,” she murmured to herself aloud, breaking herself a rose to match her gown from an arrangement in the window. Many of the flowers had been newly christened, “Elsie,” “Audrey,” “London-Madonnas” (black Arums these), while the Roses from the “Land of Punt” had been renamed “Mrs Lloyd George”--and priced accordingly. A basket of Odontoglossums eked out with Gypsophila seemed to anticipate the end, when supplies from Punt must necessarily cease. However, bright boys, like Bachir, seldom lacked patrons, and the duchess recalled glimpsing him one evening from her private sitting-room at the Ritz Hotel, seated on a garden bench in the Regina Gardens beside the Prime Minister himself; both, to all seeming, on the most cordial terms, and to have reached a perfect understanding as regards the Eastern Question. Ah, the Eastern Question! It was said that, in the Land of Dates, one might study it well. In Djezira, the chief town, beneath the great golden sun, people, they said, might grow wise. In the simoon that scatters the silver sand, in the words of the nomads, in the fairy mornings beneath the palms, society with its foolish _cliché_ ... the duchess smiled. “But for that poisonous woman, I should have, gone last year,” she told herself, interrupted in her cogitations by the appearance of her maid. “The train your Grace we shall miss it....” “Nonsense!” the duchess answered following, leaving the flowers alone again to their subtle exhalations. “I’m glad _I’m_ in a Basket!” “I have no water. I cannot reach the water.” “Life’s bound to be uncertain when you haven’t got your roots!” XIV