“What has that to do with it?” “My dear Sir Donald, if you’d ever had a hole in your net you’d know. I made Fritz take me away after two days, and I’ve never been back. I don’t want to have my one beauty ruined.” Sir Donald did not pay the reasonable compliment. He only stretched out his lean hands over his knees, and said: “Venice is the only ideal city in Europe.” “You forget Paris.” “Paris!” said Sir Donald. “Paris is a suburb of London and New York. Paris is no longer the city of light, but the city of pornography and dressmakers.” “Well, I don’t know exactly what pornography is--unless it’s some new process for taking snapshots. But I do know what gowns are, and I love Paris. The Venice shops are failures and the Venice mosquitoes are successes, and I hate Venice.” An expression of lemon-coloured amazement appeared upon Sir Donald’s face, and he glanced at Robin Pierce as if requesting the answer to a riddle. Robin looked rather as if he were enjoying himself, but the puzzled melancholy grew deeper on Sir Donald’s face. With the air of a man determined to reassure his mind upon some matter, however, he spoke again. “You visited the European capitals?” he said. “Yes, all of them.” “Constantinople?” “Terrible place! Dogs, dogs, nothing but dogs.” “Did you like Petersburg?” “No, I couldn’t bear it. I caught cold there.” “And that was why you hated it?” “Yes. I went out one night with Fritz on the Neva to hear a woman in a boat singing--a peasant girl with high cheek-bones--and I caught a frightful chill.” “Ah!” said Sir Donald. “What was the song? I know a good many of the Northern peasant songs.” Suddenly Lady Holme got up, letting her gloves fall to the ground. “I’ll sing it to you,” she said. Robin Pierce touched her arm. “For Heaven’s sake not to Miss Filberte’s accompaniment!” “Very well. But come and sit where you can see me.” “I won’t,” he said with brusque obstinacy. “Madman!” she answered. “Anyhow, you come, Sir Donald.” And she walked lightly away towards the piano, followed by Sir Donald, who walked lightly too, but uncertainly, on his thin, stick-like legs. “What are you up to, Vi?” said Lord Holme, as she came near to him. “I’m going to sing something for Sir Donald.” “Capital! Where’s Miss Filberte?” “Here I am!” piped a thin alto voice. There was a rustle of skirts as the accompanist rose hastily from her chair. “Sit down, please, Miss Filberte,” said Lady Holme in a voice of ice. Miss Filberte sat down like one who has been knocked on the head with a hammer, and Lady Holme went alone to the piano, turned the button that raised the music-stool, sat down too, holding herself very upright, and played some notes. For a moment, while she played, her face was so determined and pitiless that Mr. Bry, unaware that she was still thinking about Miss Filberte, murmured to Lady Cardington: “Evidently we are in for a song about Jael with the butter in the lordly dish omitted.”