Marcia, more especially perhaps during these later days, felt her sense of humour gently excited every time she crossed the threshold of Trewly's Restaurant. The programme which followed was always the same. The Marquis rose from a cushioned seat in the small entrance lounge to greet her, very distinguished looking in his plain dinner clothes, his black stock, vainly imitated by the younger generation, his horn-rimmed eyeglass, his cambric-fronted shirt with the black pearls, which had been the gift of the Regent to his great-grandfather. The head waiter, and generally the manager, hovered in the background while their greetings were exchanged and Marcia's coat delivered to the care of an attendant. Then they were shown with much ceremony to the same table which they had occupied on these weekly celebrations for many years. It was in a corner of the room, a corner which formed a slight recess, and special flowers, the gift of the management, were invariably in evidence. The rose-shaded lamp, with its long, silken hangings, was arranged at precisely the right angle. The Marquis asked his usual question and waved away the menu. "What you choose to offer us, Monsieur Herbrand," he would say, in his old-world but perfect French. "If Madame has any fancy, we will send you a message." So the meal commenced. Trewly's was a restaurant with a past. In the days of the Marquis's youth, when such things were studied more carefully than now, it was the one first-class restaurant in London to which the gilded youth of the aristocracy, and perhaps their sires, might indulge in the indiscretion of entertaining a young lady from the Italian chorus without fear of meeting staider relatives. The world of bohemian fashion had changed its laws since those days, and Trewly's had been left, high and dry, save for a small clientele who remembered its former glories and esteemed its cellar and cuisine. It belonged to the world which the Marquis knew, the world whose maxims he still recognised. After all these years, he would still have thought himself committing a breach of social etiquette if he had invited Marcia to lunch with him at the Ritz or the Carlton.