"And he was called something else before that," the general sighed affectedly. "Ah, your English titles! Another difficulty we poor foreigners encounter when we come to your wonderful country. I knew once an English gentleman who used to come to Roumania to shoot with a friend of mine. He came four times in four years and every time he had a different name."
"Délicieux!" Lady Orange murmured, feeling that in this statement the Roumanian general was paying an unconscious tribute to the English aristocracy. "Do tell me who it was, mon cher général."
"I cannot exactly tell you who he was, kind lady. When first I knew the gentleman he was Mr. Oldemarsh. Then somebody died and he became Lord Henry Oldemarsh. The following year somebody else died and he was Viscount Rawcliffe, and when last I saw him he was the Marquis of Barchester. Since then I have lost sight of him, but I have no doubt that when I see him he will have changed his name again."
"Vous êtes vraiment délicieux, mon cher," Lady Orange exclaimed, more convinced than ever that there was only one aristocracy in the whole of Europe, and that was the English. "No wonder you were puzzled."
She would have liked to have entered on a long dissertation on a subject which interested her more than any other—a dissertation which would have embraced the Domesday Book and the entire feudal system; but Naniescu and Miss Fairfax were once more discussing Rosemary Fowkes and her fiancé.
"I suppose," the Roumanian was saying, "that Lord Tarkington has given up journalism altogether now?"
"I don't know," Miss Fairfax replied. "Lord Tarkington never talks about himself. But Rosemary will never give up her work. She may be in love with Jasper for the moment, but she is permanently enamoured of power, of social and political power, which her clever pen will always secure for her, in a greater degree even than Tarkington's wealth and position."
"Power?" the general said thoughtfully. "Ah, yes. The writer of those articles in the International Review can lay just claim to political power. They did my unfortunate country a good deal of harm at that time, for they appeared as a part of that insidious propaganda which we are too proud, and alas, also too poor, to combat adequately. Over here in England people do not appear to understand how difficult it is to subdue a set of rebellious, arrogant people like the Hungarians, who don't seem to have realised yet that they have lost the war."
Lady Orange gave a little scream of horror.
"Pour l'amour de Dieu," she exclaimed, "keep away from politics, mon cher général."