"I ought to forget everything, save what I owe to ..."

Sir Percy's laugh broke in on her half-finished sentence.

"Lud! and to think of all that I ought not to forget!" he said loudly.
"Tony here has been clamouring for iced punch this last half-hour,
and I promised to find a booth wherein the noble liquid is properly
dispensed. Within half an hour from now His Royal Highness will be
here. I assure you, Mlle. Juliette, that from that time onwards I have
to endure the qualms of the damned, for the heir to Great Britain's
throne always contrives to be thirsty when I am satiated, which is
Tantalus' torture magnified a thousandfold, or to be satiated when my
parched palate most requires solace; in either case I am a most
pitiable man."

"In either case you contrive to talk a deal of nonsense, Sir Percy,"
said Marguerite gaily.

"What else would your ladyship have me do this lazy, hot afternoon?"

"Come and view the booths with me," she said. "I am dying for a
sight of the fat woman and the lean man, the pig-faced child, the
dwarfs and the giants. There! Monsieur Deroulede," she added,
turning to the young Frenchman who was standing close beside her,
"take Mlle. Juliette to hear the clavecin players. I vow she is tired of
my company."

The gaily-dressed group was breaking up. Juliette and Paul
Deroulede were only too ready to stroll off arm-in-arm together, and
Sir Andrew Ffoulkes was ever in attendance on his young wife.