“Never,” said the old administrator.  “Keep the breed pure, be it white, black, or yellow.  Bastard races cannot flourish.  They are waste of Nature.”

The Professor glanced towards the bridal pair.

“And these also?” he asked.

“Perhaps,” said Sir Ralph, “but in her case her education has been so entirely European.”

Hereupon, Lady Everington approaching, Sir Ralph turned to her and said,—­

“Dear lady, let me congratulate you:  this is your masterpiece.”

“Sir Ralph,” said the hostess, already looking to see which of her guests she would next pounce upon, “You know the East so well.  Give me one little piece of advice to hand over to the children before they start on their honeymoon.”

Sir Ralph smiled benignly.

“Where are they going?” he asked.

“Everywhere,” replied Lady Everington, “they are going to travel.”

“Then let them travel all over the world,” he answered, “only not to Japan.  That is their Bluebeard’s cupboard; and into that they must not look.”

There was more discussion of bridegroom and bride than is usual at society weddings, which are apt to become mere reunions of fashionable people, only vaguely conscious of the identity of those in whose honour they have been gathered together.

“Geoffrey Barrington is such a healthy barbarian,” said a pale young man with a monocle; “if it had been a high-browed child of culture like you, Reggie, with a taste for exotic sensations, I should hardly have been surprised.”

“And if it had been you, Arthur,” replied Reggie Forsyth of the Foreign Office, who was Barrington’s best man, “I should have known at once that it was the twenty thousand a year which was the supreme attraction.”

There was a certain amount of Anglo-Indian sentiment afloat among the company, which condemned the marriage entirely as an outrage on decency.

“What was Brandan dreaming of,” snorted General Haslam, “to allow his son to marry a yellow native?”

“Dreaming of the mortgage on the Brandan property, I expect, General,” answered Lady Rushworth.

“It’s scandalous,” foamed the General, “a fine young fellow, a fine officer, too!  His career ruined for an undersized geisha!”

“But think of the millions of yens or sens or whatever they are, with which she is going to re-gild the Brandan coronet!”

“That wouldn’t console me for a yellow baby with slit eyes,” continued the General, his voice rising in debate as his custom was at the Senior.

“Hush, General!” said his interlocutor, “we don’t discuss such possibilities.”

“But everybody here must be thinking of them, except that unfortunate young man.”

“We never say what we are thinking, General; it would be too upsetting.”

“And we are to have a Japanese Lord Brandan, sitting in the House of Lords?” the General went on.