"What Empress?" demanded Paula, halting in the middle of the room, and staring at her.
"The Empress of Austria, dear. Somehow one can't imagine Franz Josef as a young man, can one? But it says here that he was very good-looking, and she fell in love with him at first sight. Of course, he ought to have married the elder sister, but he saw Elizabeth first, with her hair down her back, and that decided him."
"What on earth has that got to do with Willoughby's play?" asked Paula, in a stupefied voice.
"Nothing, my dear; but I am reading a very interesting book about her."
"Well, it doesn't interest me," said Paula, resuming her pacing of the room.
"Never mind, Maud!" said Mathilda. "Paula has a onetrack mind, and no manners. Tell me more about your Empress!"
"Poor thing!" said Maud. "It was that mother-in-law, you know. She seems to have been a very unpleasant woman. The Archduchess, they called her, though I can't quite make out why she was only an Archduchess when her son was an Emperor. She wanted him to marry Helene."
"A little more, and I shall feel compelled to read this entrancing work," said Mathilda. "Who was Helene?"
Maud was still explaining Helene to Mathilda when the men came into the drawing-room.
It was plain that Nathaniel had not found the male company congenial. He had apparently been buttonholed by Roydon, for he cast several affronted glances at the playwright, and removed himself as far from his vicinity as he could. Mottisfont sat down beside Maud; and Stephen, who appeared to sympathise with his uncle, surprised everyone by engaging him in perfectly amiable conversation.