"And quite mediæval and Asiatic, do you not think so, dear lady? The Hungarian aristocrats used to go to their Court dressed in that barbaric fashion in the years before the war."
"And very handsome they must have looked, judging by Peter Blakeney's appearance to-night."
"I knew the mother, too," Miss Fairfax remarked gently; "she was a dear."
"She is dead, then?" M. de Kervoisin asked.
"Oh, yes, some years ago, my dear friend," the general replied. "It was a tragic story, I remember, but I have forgotten its details."
"No one ever knew it over here," was Miss Fairfax's somewhat terse comment, which seemed to suggest that further discussion on the subject would be unwelcome.
General Naniescu, nevertheless, went on with an indifferent shrug and that same slightly contemptuous tone in his voice. "Hungarian women are most of them ill-balanced. But by your leave, gracious ladies, we will not trouble our heads any longer with that young man, distinguished though his cricket-playing career may have been. To me he is chiefly interesting because he dances in perfect harmony with Venus Aphrodite."
"Whose Vulcan, I imagine, he would gladly be," M. de Kervoisin remarked with a smile.
"A desire shared probably by many, or is the one and only Vulcan already found?"
"Yes, in the person of Lord Tarkington," Miss Fairfax replied.