"Proceed," he said.
"The Brothers Korust," she went on, leaning towards him, "have a week's engagement at the Alhambra. Their salary is six hundred pounds. They play very beautifully, of course, but I think that it is as much as they are worth."
Peter agreed with her fervently. He had no soul for music.
"They have taken the furnished house belonging to one of your dukes, in Hamilton Place, for which we are bound; taken it, too, at a fabulous rent," Mademoiselle Celaire continued. "They have installed there a chef and a whole retinue of servants. They were here for seven nights; they have issued invitations for seven supper parties."
"Hospitable young men they seem to be," Peter murmured. "I read in one of the stage papers that Andrea is a count in his own country, and that they perform in public only for the love of their music and for the sake of the excitement and travel."
"A paragraph wholly inspired and utterly false," Mademoiselle Celaire declared firmly, sitting a little forward in the car and laying her hand, ablaze with jewels, upon his coat sleeve. "Listen. They call themselves Hungarians. Bah! I know that they are in touch with a great European Court, both of them, the Court of the country to which they really belong. They have plans, plans and schemes connected with their visit here, which I do not understand. I have done my best with Andrea Korust, but he is not a man to be trusted. I know that there is something more in these seven supper parties than idle hospitality. I and others like me, artistes and musicians, are invited, to give the assemblies a properly Bohemian tone, but there are to be other guests, attracted there, no doubt, because the papers have spoken of these gatherings."
"You have some idea of what it all means, in your mind?" Peter suggested.
"It is too vague to put into words," she declared, shaking her head. "We must both watch. Afterwards we will, if you like, compare notes."
The car drew up before the doors of a handsome house in Hamilton Place. A footman received Peter, and relieved him of his hat and overcoat. A trim maid performed the same office for Mademoiselle Celaire. They met a moment or two later and were ushered into a large drawing-room in which a dozen or two of men and women were already assembled, and from which came a pleasant murmur of voices and laughter. The apartment was hung with pale green satin; the furniture was mostly Chippendale, upholstered in the same shade. A magnificent grand piano stood open in a smaller room, just visible beyond. Only one thing seemed strange to the two newly arrived guests. The room was entirely lit with shaded candles, giving a certain mysterious but not unpleasant air of obscurity to the whole suite of apartments. Through the gloom the jewels and eyes of the women seemed to shine with a new brilliance. Slight eccentricities of toilette—for a part of the gathering was distinctly Bohemian—were softened and subdued. The whole effect was somewhat weird, but also picturesque.
Andrea Korust advanced from a little group to meet his guests. Off the stage he seemed at first sight frailer and slighter than ever. His dress coat had been exchanged for a velvet dinner jacket, and his white tie for a drooping black bow. He had a habit of blinking nearly all the time, as though his large brown eyes, which he seldom wholly opened, were weaker than they appeared to be. Nevertheless, when he came to within a few paces of his newly arrived visitors, they shone with plenty of expression. Without any change of countenance, however, he held out his hand.