Princess Albert, brisk and buxom and pleasant and pleased, waddled through the house into the garden, where she met Nadine, leaving her husband to follow still wondering at the strangeness of it all. She talked voluble, effective English in a guttural manner.
"So screaming!" she said. "Nobody here, neither dearest Dodo nor her husband to receive us, so when they come we will receive them. Where is she?"
Nadine pointed to an aeroplane that was flying low over the house.
"She's there just now," she said.
"Flying? Albert, Dodo is flying. Is that not courageous of her?"
"But Lady Chesterford should have been here to receive us," said he. "It is very strange, but we will have tea. And where is my evening paper? I shall have left it in the cab, and it must be fetched. You there: I wish my evening paper."
The person he had thus addressed, who resembled an aged but extremely respectable butler, took off his hat, and Princess Albert instantly recognised him.
"But it is dear Mr. Vane," she said. "How pleasant! Is it not amusing that we should arrive when Dodo is flying and Lord Chesterford is fishing? So awkward for them, poor things, when they find we are here."
Prince Albert looked at him with some mistrust, which gradually cleared.
"I remember you!" he said. "You are Lady Chesterford's father. Let us have tea and my evening paper."