Lola rose from the table. The pleasant dining room at the Carlton was still well-filled, and the band was playing one of those French things with an irresistible march time which carry the mind immediately to the Alcazar and conjure up a picture of an outdoor stage crowded with dancing figures seen through a trickle of cigarette smoke and gently moving branches of young leaves. “Don’t let’s make up our minds what we’ll do till we get to the very doors. Then probably one or other of us will have a brain wave. In any case I’m very happy. I’ve loved every minute of this evening and it’s so nice to be with you again.” Chalfont touched her arm. He could not resist the temptation. “I’d sell my soul in return for a dozen such nights,” he said, and there was a Simpkins quiver in his voice and a Treadwell look of adoration in his eyes. He was in uniform, having later to return to the Guards encampment in Kensington Gardens. They passed through the almost empty lounge into the hall with its cases of discreet, ruinous jewelry on the walls under gleaming lights, and there a man in plain clothes drew himself up as Chalfont approached and clicked his heels. “Oh, hello, Ellingham,” said Chalfont. “How are you, my dear chap? Thought you were in India.” “I was, Sir. Got back yesterday. Curious place, London, by Jove.” Chalfont turned to Lola. “Madame de Brézé, may I introduce my friend Colonel Ellingham?” Those tall dark men with a touch of the Oriental in them somewhere—Lola caught her breath, but managed to smile and say the conventional thing. But at the sound of her voice, the woman who had been standing with her back to them, talking to the obsequious _maître d’hôtel_, whirled round. It was Feo—Feo with her eyes wide and round and full of the most astonishing mischief and amusement—Feo with her mouth half open as though she were on the point of bursting into a huge laugh. Lola, that discreet little Lola, that little London mouse, niece of the stiff old Breezy, daughter of those little people in Queen’s Road, Bayswater, with a brigadier general, if you please, the famous Sir Peter Chalfont with a comic cork arm to catch whom every match-making mother had spread her net for years! Without turning a hair, Lola held out her hand impulsively. “My dear,” she said in a ringing voice, “I thought you said that you were going to the Ritz.”