"What do you mean?" asked the pianist, for whom British humour was a closed letter. "Are you joking with me? How can one be silent and make music?" The most thankless task in the world is explaining a joke to a person who has not seen it. Lorimer did not try, and after suggesting _Les peines du Coeur_, _Angoisses de l'âme_, _Le Mal de dents_, _Les Désespoirs de l'Amour_, and a few other eye-tickling titles, he left the puzzled composer and made his way upstairs. It was close upon midnight, the hour at which supper was to be served. XI GENERAL SABAROFF Philip was here, there, and everywhere, playing the host to the admiration of all. Everyone voted him charming. The most exacting society critics admired the ease with which he did the honours of his house, and declared that Philip Grantham was a gentleman. The English man of the world has no higher dignity to confer. No one thought of going away, although the crowd began to be stifling, but an English crowd is ready to endure anything in order to contemplate at close quarters the celebrity of the moment. The lion that they were expecting to roar for them this evening was General Sabaroff, the _pièce de résistance_ of the evening. Philip began to fear that the General had been detained by some unforeseen business, and would not put in an appearance after all. He had not sent out invitations "to meet General Sabaroff," but he had told a great many of his guests beforehand that he expected him; one person had told another; and it came to much the same thing. He caught sight of de Lussac, who threw him an appealing little glance which plainly said, "Come to my rescue." He found the young diplomat in the toils of Mrs. Van der Leyd Smythe. He joined them and led off de Lussac, after having passed the lady on to an old banker who happened to be standing near, alone and negotiable. "My dear fellow," said de Lussac, "I owe you a debt of gratitude for having extracted me from the clutches of that American mamma. I have had to listen to the history of the noble house of Gampton. Upon my word, a lot of those worthy Americans are prouder of their aristocratic alliances than of the brave pioneers who founded the United States. They would sell all the shirt sleeves that felled the forests of America for the coat-of-arms of some ancestor ennobled, a few centuries ago, for something which to-day would perhaps be rewarded with a few years' penal servitude." "Snobbishness," said Philip, "is a disease that one meets with in all Anglo-Saxons, but with terrible complications in certain Americans.... I almost expected the Minister for War. His lordship promised me he would come."