r sort whose approval weighs in proportion as they are themselves
social heavyweights. There was the Leader of the House, there were
a couple of members of the Cabinet, there was the Master of the
Foxhounds, there was the bishop of the diocese, and there was one of
the big Derbyshire landowners; there was an ex-governor-general
of something, an ex-ambassador to the United States, and a famous
general; there was a Hebrew financier of London, and Logotheti, the
Greek financier from Paris, who were regarded as colleagues of Van
Torp, the American financier; there was the scientific peer who had
dined at the Turkish Embassy with Lady Maud, there was the peer whose
horse had just won the Derby, and there was the peer who knew German
and was looked upon as the coming man in the Upper House. Many had
their wives with them, and some had lost their wives or could not
bring them; but very few were looking for a wife, and there were no
young women looking for husbands, since the Senorita da Cordova was
apparently not to be reckoned with those.

Now at this stage of my story it would be unpardonable to keep my
readers in suspense, if I may suppose that any of them have a little
curiosity left. Therefore I shall not narrate in detail what happened
on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, seeing that it was just what might
have been expected to happen at a week-end party during the season
when there is nothing in the world to do but to play golf, tennis, or
croquet, or to ride or drive all day, and to work hard at bridge all
the evening; for that is what it has come to.

Everything went very well till Sunday night, and most of the people
formed a much better opinion of Mr. Van Torp than those who had lately
read about him in the newspapers might have thought possible. The
Cabinet Ministers talked politics with him and found him sound--for
an American; the M.F.H. saw him ride, and felt for him exactly the
sympathy which a Don Cossack, a cowboy, and a Bedouin might feel for
each other if they met on horseback, and which needs no expression in
words; and the three distinguished peers liked him at once, because he
was not at all impressed by their social greatness, but was very
much interested in what they had to say respectively about science,
horse-breeding, and Herr Bebel. The great London financier, and he,
and Monsieur Logotheti exchanged casual remarks which all the men who
were interested in politics referred to mysterious loans that mus