r travelling acquaintanceships. People looked at each
other rather vaguely, or definitely ignored each other, with profiles
and backs which said quite plainly: "We won't have anything to do with
you until we know more about you." The entrance of the party from the
Villa Androud created a strong diversion. As soon as Baroudi was
perceived by the attendants, there was a soft and gliding movement to
serve him. The tall Nubians in white and scarlet smiled, salaamed, and
showed their pleasure and their desire for his notice. The German hall
porter hastened forward, with a pink smile upon his countenance; the
_chef d'orchestre_, a real Hungarian, began to play at him with fervour;
and a black gentleman in gold and scarlet, who looked like a Prince of
the East, but who was really earning his living in connection with the
lift to the first floor, bounded to show them to a table.

Baroudi accepted all these attentions with a magnificent indifference
that had in it nothing of assumption. They sat down, he ordered coffee
and liqueurs, and they listened to the music, which was genuinely good,
and had the peculiar fervent and yet melancholy flavour which music
receives from the bows of Hungarian fiddlers. Nigel was smoking. He
seemed profoundly attentive, did not attempt any conversation, and kept
his eyes on the ground. Mrs. Armine seemed listening attentively, too,
but she had not been sitting for five minutes before she had seen and
summed up every group in her neighborhood; had defined the
nationalities, criticized the gowns and faces of the women, and made up
her mind as to the characters of the men who accompanied them, and as to
the family or amorous ties uniting them to each other and the men.

And she had done more than this: she had measured the amount of
interest, of curiosity, of admiration, of envy, of condemnation which
she herself excited with the almost unerring scales of the clever woman
who has lived for years both in the great and the half worlds.

Quite near them, not level with their table, but a little behind it on
the right, within easy range of her eyes, Lord and Lady Hayman were
sitting, with another English couple, a Sir John and Lady Murchison,
smart, gambling, racing, pleasure-loving people, who seemed to be
everywhere at the same time, and never to miss any function of
importance where their "set" put in an appearance. Lady Murchison was a
pretty and vindictive blonde--the sort of woman who looks as if