A foreign musician, with long hair and pale face, was playing some weird Eastern dance on the piano as Eustace entered and bowed before her, and it suddenly flashed across his mind that this sensuously beautiful woman was quite out of place amid these cold English blondes and undecided brunettes. She ought to be tossing her slender arms in a tropical forest, to the shrill music of pipes and muffled throbbing of serpent-skin drums, whirling in the mystic gyrations of some sacred dance before the shrine of a veiled goddess. The sickly odour of pastilles, which she was fond of burning in her drawing-room, assisted this fancy, and he was only roused from this strange vision by the mellow voice of his hostess bidding him welcome, as she touched his hand with her slender fingers. "I am glad to see you, Mr. Gartney," she said, with a slow smile; "it is indeed kind of you to call so soon after your return. And your friend, whom you were to bring?" "Is here," replied Eustace, presenting his cousin, "Sir Guy Errington." Guy bowed, feeling somewhat bewildered at her rich loveliness, and, with a swift glance from under her heavy eye-lashes, she shook hands with him. "Mr. Gartney's friends are mine also--but you are welcome on your own account, Sir Guy." "You are very kind," answered Errington mechanically, "I think the obligation is on my side, however." "He's a fool," decided Mrs. Veilsturm in her own mind, as she looked at his fresh, simple face; "I can twist him round my finger, and I will, if it's only to spite his wife." At this moment Eustace was seized upon by Mr. Dolser, who was on the look-out for copy, and, much against his will, was dragged to the other end of the room by the pertinacious little man, leaving his cousin in conversation with Mrs. Veilsturm. The room was quite full of all sorts and conditions of men and women. Cleopatra knew everybody in the literary, artistic, and musical world, and they all came to her receptions, so that it was quite a treat to find somebody there who had done nothing. This happened on occasions when someone who had not done anything was brought to worship someone who had. There were plenty of lady novelists in all shades, from blonde to brunette, picking up ideas for their next three-volume publication; pale young poets, with long hair and undecided legs, who wrote rondels, triolets, and ballads, hinting, in wonderful rhyme, at things fantastical; dramatists, young and old, full of three-act plays and hatred of managers and critics. A haggard young man of the impressionist school drooped in a corner, discoursing of Art, in the newest jargon of the studios, to the last fashionable manageress, who did not understand a word he was saying, but pretended to do so, as she wanted him to paint her picture. Everyone present had an eye to business, and each was pursuing his or her aim with vicious pertinacity.