"She's the kind that doesn't know a lady or gentleman without a label,"
my kind friend warned me. "You must be prepared for that."

"I'll be prepared for anything," I assured her. But when it came to the
test, I wasn't quite.

Lady Kilmarny wrote a line to Lady Turnour, and asked if she might bring
a maid to be interviewed--a young woman whom she could recommend. The
note was sent down to the bride (who of course had the best suite in the
hotel, on the first floor) and presently an answer came--saying that Her
Ladyship would be pleased to receive Lady Kilmarny and the person in
question.

Suddenly I felt that I must go alone. "Please leave me to my fate," I
said. "I should be too self-conscious if you were with me. Probably I
should laugh in her face, or do something dreadful."

"Very well," Lady Kilmarny agreed. "Perhaps you're right. Say that I
sent you, and that, though you've never been with me, friends of mine
know all about you. You might tell her that you were to have travelled
with the Princess Boriskoff. That will impress her. She would kiss the
boot of a Princess. Afterward, come up and tell me how you got on with
'Her Ladyship.'"

I was stupid to be nervous, and told myself so; but as I knocked at the
door of the suite reserved for Millionaires and other Royalties, my
heart was giving little ineffective jumps in my breast, like--as my old
nurse used to say--"a frog with three legs."