"The days of foreign alliances are past," Karschoff replied, "but a few intermarriages might be very good for this country."
"Are you serious?" she asked.
"Absolutely! I would not suggest anything of the sort with Germany, but with this new Russia, the Russia of which Naida Karetsky is a daughter, why not? Although they will not have me back there, Russia is some day going to lay down the law to Europe."
"I wonder whether Maggie has any ideas of the sort in her mind," Mrs. Bollington Smith observed. "She seems curiously abstracted to-night."
Chalmers came grumblingly up to Mrs. Bollington Smith, with whom he was an established favourite.
"Lady Maggie is treating me disgracefully," he complained. "She will scarcely dance at all. She goes around talking to every one as though it were a sort of farewell party."
"Perhaps it may be," Karschoff remarked quietly.
"She isn't going away, is she?" Chalmers demanded.
"Who knows?" the Prince replied. "Lady Maggie is one of those strange people to whom one may look with every confidence for the unexpected."
She herself came across to them, a few moments later.