The radiance of it, the brilliance of it, dazzled the eyes; the dimness, the misty dreaminess of it clouded the brain. She felt drugged, hypnotised out of realities, as she looked towards the dais where Sir George, the Star of his Order almost hidden by one of the huge tinsel garlands which had been thrown round the neck of the guests as they entered, sat in a gilt chair, his solitary figure outlined harshly, by reason of his dark political uniform, against the background of white-marble tracery. Thence she looked to the English ladies in gay _décolletés_ dresses who, with a sprinkling of black coats and red tunics, banked the dais on either side. So to the line of officials and soldiers edging the gangway below the dais. Finally, on to the hosts themselves who sate behind in rows. Rows on rows ablaze with colour and sparkle. Rows on rows imperturbable, passive, without a smile or a frown for the scene in which they bore so large a part. So far, however, despite those great tinsel garlands which were so distracting a novelty upon black coats, scarlet tunics, and _décolletés_ dresses, a certain relevancy to the central idea, embodied in that solitary figure of an elderly Englishman raised above the rest, was not wanting in the details of the spectacle. But what, thought Lesley, could be said of that group upon the square of red and green-flowered Brussels carpet spread immediately in front of the dais? Spread between the gilt sofa where she sat with Jerry between her and Lady Arbuthnot, and a similar gilt sofa on the other side occupied by the general's wife and her two daughters. What an inconceivably unsuitable surrounding they made, five Englishwomen and a child, to those other five and a child? Two ragged drum bangers, two dissipated fiddle and guitar twangers, a dreamy-looking boy doing nothing, and the usual posturing dancer, stout as to figure, bunchy as to petticoats, with glued bandeaux of hair and a nasal quavering voice which paused only for furtive swallowings of the betel-nut she was chewing all too palpably! '_Tinkle, tinkle, ootel ish-star_.' She trilled with an affable, opulent curve of hip and hand towards the _sahib logue_ collectively, for whose delectation she was singing 'Englis fassen'; an accomplishment she had learned from a girl who had been taught hymns in a mission school. '_Ha-a-vunder vart-oo-ar_'--she simpered with a special coquettish flirt of her fingers and full petticoat for that respectable father of a family, Sir George, who, honest man, sat horribly conscious, still more horribly bored, yet patient, waiting for the master of the ceremonies to ask him if he had had enough. Enough?