The evening was a failure of so thorough a description as to be almost pathetic. Herr Grossesnoise played, but not the piano. He came up from the dining-room, slightly rosy with port and altogether inflated with his success, into the drawing-room, set with row upon row of small gilt chairs, and proceeded to do conjuring-tricks in a curious patois of German, French, and English. He insisted on people taking cards from him, and on guessing the cards they had chosen, pressing them continually on his hostess and exclaiming, ‘That is the Funf de piques, Lady Howard-Britten.’ His colossal form and his iron will permeated the room, while he insisted on doing trick after trick and pointedly addressing his hostess as Lady Howard-Britten, till she got almost to hate the sound of that desired prefix, while all the time the Steinway Grand yawned for him. More bitter than that was the fact that he asked Lady Howard-Britten to play a little slow music (‘You play, hein, miladi?’) while he did the most difficult of his tricks, and there the poor lady had to sit, when it was he who should be sitting there, and try to remember ‘White Wings they never grow whiskers,’ or some other waltz of her youth. By degrees the growing fury of her guests generated that force of crowds which no individual can withstand, and in mass they rose and went downstairs, so that by half-past eleven the rooms were empty but for the pianist and his host and hostess. Even then he would not desist, but went on with his ridiculous tricks till she could have cried with fatigue and thwarted ambition. But no climber sits down over a reverse even as crushing as this, and Mrs. Howard-Britten determined to wipe out her failure with a ball. She got hold of a good cotillion-leader, and gave him practically _carte blanche_ as regards the presents, engaged her band, and issued a thousand invitations. When the dancing was at its height there were precisely ten couples on the floor, and every one went home laden like a Christmas tree with expensive spoils.