ar, I know I am late," she began before she was inside the
door, "but Og had so much to say, and there was a block at Hyde Park
Corner. My dear Michael, how smart you look!"

She came round the corner of the screen and the Falbes burst upon her,
Hermann and Sylvia standing by the fire. For the short, spectacled
pianist there was this very tall, English-looking young man, upright and
soldierly, with his handsome, boyish face and well-fitting clothes. That
was bad enough, but infinitely worse was she who was to have been the
full-blown barmaid. Instead was this magnificent girl, nearly as tall as
her brother, with her small oval face crowning the column of her neck,
her eyes merry, her mouth laughing at some brotherly retort that Hermann
had just made. Aunt Barbara took her in with one second's survey--her
face, her neck, her beautiful dress, her whole air of ease and
good-breeding, and gave a despairing glance at her own prickly tea-gown.
For the moment, amiably accustomed as she was to laugh at herself, she
did not find it humourous.

"Miss Sylvia Falbe, Aunt Barbara," said Michael with a little tremor
in his voice; "and Mr. Hermann Falbe, Lady Barbara Jerome," he added,
rather as if he expected nobody to believe it.

Aunt Barbara made the best of it: shook hands in her jolly manner, and
burst into laughter.

"Michael, I could slay you," she said; "but before I do that I must tell
your friends all about it. This horrible nephew of mine, Miss Falbe,
promised me two weird musicians, and I expected--I really can't tell you
what I expected--but there were to be spectacles and velveteen coats and
the general air of an afternoon concert at Clapham Junction. But it is
nice to be made such a fool of. I feel precisely like an elderly and
sour governess who has been ordered to come down to dinner so that
there shan't be thirteen. Give me your arm, Mr. Falbe, and take me in
to dinner at once, where I may drown my embarrassment in soup. Or does
Michael go in first? Go on, wretch!"

Presently they were seated at dinner, and Aunt Barbara could not help
enlarging a little on her own discomfiture.

"It is all your fault, Michael," she said. "You have been in London all
these weeks without letting me know anything about you or your friends,
or what you were doing; so naturally I supposed you were leading some
obscure kind of existence. Instead of which I find this sort of thing.
My dear, what good soup! I shall see if I can't indu