"_Alors_!" said Lady Henry, lifting her hand. "We all know how obedient
you are. Good-night!"

The Duchess flushed. She just touched her aunt's hand, and then, turning
an indignant face on Sir Wilfrid, she bade him farewell with an air
which seemed to him intended to avenge upon his neutral person the
treatment which, from Lady Henry, even so spoiled a child of fortune as
herself could not resent.

Twenty minutes later, Sir Wilfrid entered the first big room of the
Foreign Office party. He looked round him with a revival of the
exhilaration he had felt on Lady Henry's staircase, enjoying, after his
five years in Teheran, after his long homeward journey by desert and
sea, even the common trivialities of the scene--the lights, the gilding,
the sparkle of jewels, the scarlet of the uniforms, the noise and
movement of the well-dressed crowd. Then, after this first physical
thrill, began the second stage of pleasure--the recognitions and the
greetings, after long absence, which show a man where he stands in the
great world, which sum up his past and forecast his future. Sir Wilfrid
had no reason to complain. Cabinet ministers and great ladies, members
of Parliament and the permanent officials who govern but do not rule,
soldiers, journalists, barristers--were all glad, it seemed, to grasp
him by the hand. He had returned with a record of difficult service
brilliantly done, and the English world rewarded him in its
accustomed ways.

It was towards one o'clock that he found himself in a crowd pressing
towards the staircase in the wake of some departing royalties. A tall
man in front turned round to look for some ladies behind him from whom