So far all was prosperous and the climbing weather stood at ‘set fair.’ It is true that she had changed horses in mid-stream, for in intention she definitely unharnessed poor Mr. Harbinger, and put the unsuspecting pianist in her shafts. But the fatal thing about changing horses in mid-stream is that the coachman usually puts in a worse horse, which Mrs. Howard-Britten had not done, since Mr. Harbinger could not at the present time be considered a horse at all. Already musical London was interested in the advent of her new mascot, for he had been well advertised, and of her twenty-four invitations, nineteen guests instantly accepted, who with her husband and the Herr would cause ‘covers to be laid,’ as she was determined the fashionable papers should say, for twenty-two. Then she settled to have an evening party afterwards, and though on the couple of hundred invitations which she sent out she did not definitely state that Herr Grossesnoise was going to play, she wrote on the cards ‘To meet Herr Grossesnoise.’ But when you see a pianist’s name on an ‘At Home, 10.30. R.S.V.P.’ it is not unnatural to suppose that he is going to be a pianist in very deed. Among these two hundred she asked a fair sprinkling of people she wanted to know, but at present didn’t, and had a Steinway Grand precariously hoisted through the window into her drawing-room and retuned on arrival. But in these arrangements her potential horizontality came out more glaringly than ever, for she took a middle course which no climber ever should. She was indefinite, she did not actually know whether Herr Grossesnoise would play or not. Either she ought to have engaged him to play at any fee within reason, if she meant (as she did mean), to make a real spring upwards to-night, or she should not have mentioned the fact that he was coming. As it was, every one supposed he would play, and since his recital the day before had roused a _furore_ of enthusiasm in the press, almost all her two hundred evening-party invitations were accepted. A whole section of Brook Street was blocked with motor-cars, and several aspiring Americans who found it impossible to get to their hotel for the present looked in unasked until the road was clear. But as Mrs. Howard-Britten knew no more than a high percentage of her guests by sight, the gratuitous honour thus done her passed undetected.