to enable him to get used to them, to see how harmless they were. He looked at Millicent in the course of time and saw that Captain Sholto, seated beside her, had not the same standard of propriety, inasmuch as he made a remark to her every few minutes. Like himself the young lady in the balcony was losing the play, thanks to her so keeping her eyes on her friend from Lomax Place, whose position she thus endeavoured to gauge. He had quite given up the Paraguayan complications; by the end of the half-hour his attention might have come back to them had he not then been engaged in wondering what the Princess would say to him after the descent of the curtain—or if she would say anything. The consideration of this problem as the moment of the solution drew nearer made his heart again beat fast. He watched the old lady on his left and supposed it was natural a princess should have an attendant—he took for granted she was an attendant—as different as possible from herself. This ancient dame was without majesty or grace; huddled together with her hands folded on her stomach and her lips protruding, she solemnly followed the performance. Several times, however, she turned her head to Hyacinth, and then her expression changed; she repeated the jovial, encouraging, almost motherly nod with which she had greeted him on his making his bow and by which she appeared to wish to intimate that, better than the serene beauty on the other side, she could enter into the full anomaly of his situation. She seemed to argue that he must keep his head and that if the worst should come to the worst she was there to look after him. Even when at last the curtain descended it was some moments before the Princess spoke, though she rested her smile on her guest as if she were considering what he would best like her to say. He might at that instant have guessed what he discovered later—that among this lady’s faults (he was destined to learn they were numerous) not the least eminent was an exaggerated fear of the commonplace. He expected she would make some remark about the play, but what she said was, very gently and kindly, “I like to know all sorts of people.” “I shouldn’t think you’d find the least difficulty in that,” Hyacinth replied. “Oh, if one wants anything very much it’s sure to be difficult. Every one isn’t so obliging as you.” Hyacinth could think immediately of no proper answer to this, but the old lady saved him the trouble by declaring with a foreign accent: “I think you were most extraordinarily good-natured. I had no idea you’d come—to two strange women.” “Yes, we’re strange women,” said the Princess musingly. “It’s not true she finds things difficult; she makes every one do everything,” her companion went on.