For it she substituted the _Ombra leggiera_. In its scatter of trills that mount, as birds mount, there were no evocations, though she did begin wondering again about Mrs. Beamish's music-room. If it were not too impossible she might give the _Ernani involame_. But at that and very unintentionally she thought of Lennox again. She made a face and looked through the window. As usual she was hungry. The car now was bellowing through opening gates which, as she looked back, a man in brown was closing. On either side was a high stone wall, but beyond, as she looked again, was an avenue bordered with trees and farther on a white house with projecting wings in which was a court, an entrance and, above and about the latter, a pillared perron. From the entrance she could see a man in livery hastening. Behind him, a man in black appeared. The car stopped. The first man opened the door. Cassy got out. The other man additionally assisted by looking on and moving aside. Cassy went into a hall where a young person who did not resemble the Belle Chocolatiere but whose costume suggested her, diligently approached. "Would madame care to go upstairs?" No, madame would not. But Cassy, instinctively insolent to pretentiousness, was very simple with the simple. "Thank you. Will you mind taking my wrap? Thank you again." She looked about the hall. Before she could inventory it, here was another man. "A nice trick you played on me," Cassy threw at him. "I was half-way before I discovered it. The orchids reconciled me. Thank you for them. Who is here?" Smiling, deferential, apparently modest, perfectly sent out in perfectly cut evening clothes, Paliser took her hand. "You are and, incidentally, I am." Cassy withdrew her hand. "I suppose you think you are a host in yourself." "Merely the most fortunate of mortals," replied Paliser, who could be eighteenth-century when he liked, but who seldom bothered to keep it up. Already he had been doing a little inventorying on his own account. The basilica frock did not say much and what it did say was not to his taste. The Sunday night fantasy he much preferred. It was rowdy, but it was artistic. But beauty may be dishonoured, it cannot be vulgarised. Even in pseudo-Parisianisms Cassy was a gem. A doubt though, one that had already visited him, returned. Was the game worth the possible scandal? But now Cassy was getting back at him. "To stand about with the most fortunate of mortals ought to be a shape of bliss. As it happens, I would rather sit." "Naturally. Only, worse luck, there is no throne." Cassy gave it to him again: "There is a court fool, though. Where are your cap and bells?" "Not on you at any rate." He motioned and Cassy passed on into a room beyond which other rooms extended, each different, but all in the same key, a monotone attenuated by lustres and the atmosphere, infinitely relaxing, which wealth exhales.