had been accorded to the latter.

"Take us the little foxes, the little foxes that spoil the vines," she
quoted to herself; "not that that music-boy would do much in the
destructive line, but the principle is good."

CHAPTER X: SOME REFLECTIONS AND A "TE DEUM"

Cicely awoke, on the morning after the "memorable evening," with the
satisfactory feeling of victory achieved, tempered by a troubled sense of
having achieved it in the face of a reasonably grounded opposition. She
had burned her boats, and was glad of it, but the reek of their burning
drifted rather unpleasantly across the jubilant incense-swinging of her
Te Deum service.

Last night had marked an immense step forward in her social career;
without running after the patronage of influential personages she had
seen it quietly and tactfully put at her service. People such as the
Grafin von Tolb were going to be a power in the London world for a very
long time to come. Herr von Kwarl, with all his useful qualities of
brain and temperament, might conceivably fall out of favour in some
unexpected turn of the political wheel, and the Shalems would probably
have their little day and then a long afternoon of diminishing social
importance; the placid dormouse-like Grafin would outlast them all. She
had the qualities which make either for contented mediocrity or else for
very durable success, according as circumstances may dictate. She was
one of those characters that can neither thrust themselves to the front,
nor have any wish to do so, but being there, no ordinary power can thrust
them away.

With the Grafin as her friend Cicely found herself in altogether a
different position from that involved by the mere interested patronage of
Lady Shalem. A vista of social success was opened up to her, and she did
not mean it to be just the ordinary success of a popular and influential
hostess moving in an important circle. That people with naturally bad
manners should have to be polite and considerate in their dealings with
her, that people who usually held themselves aloof should have to be
gracious and amiable, that the self-assured should have to be just a
little humble and anxious where she was concerned, these things of course
she intended to happen; she was a woman. But, she told herself, she
intended a great deal more than that when she traced the pattern for her
scheme of social influence. In her heart she detested the German
occupation as a hateful