“You could scarcely believe that,” he whispered, “if you have any memory at all.”

There was a faint touch of pink in her cheeks, a tinge of colour as delicate as the passing of a gleam of sunshine over a sea-glistening shell.

“But Englishmen are so unfaithful,” she sighed.

“Then I at least am an exception,” Nigel answered swiftly.  “The words which you checked upon my lips the last time we were alone together still live in my heart.  I think, Naida, the time has come to say them.”

Their immediate neighbours had deserted them.  He leaned a little towards her.

“You know so well that I love you, Naida,” he said.  “Will you be my wife?”

She looked up at him, half laughing, yet with tears in her eyes.  With an impulsive little gesture, she caught his hand in hers for a moment.

“How horribly sure you must have felt of me,” she complained, “to have spoken here, with all these people around!  Supposing I had told you that my life’s work lay amongst my own people, or that I had made up my mind to marry Oscar Immelan, to console him for his great disappointment.”

“I shouldn’t have believed you,” he answered, smiling.

“Conceit!” she exclaimed.

He shook his head.

“In a sense, of course, I am conceited,” he replied.  “I am the happiest and proudest man here.  I really think that after all we ought to turn it into a celebration.”

The band was playing a waltz.  Naida’s head moved to the music, and presently Nigel rose to his feet with a smile, and they passed into the ballroom.  Karschoff and Mrs. Bollington Smith watched them with interest.

“Naida is looking very wonderful to-night,” the latter remarked.  “And Nigel, too; I wonder if there is anything between them.”

“The days of foreign alliances are past,” Karschoff replied, “but a few intermarriages might be very good for this country.”

“Are you serious?” she asked.

“Absolutely!  I would not suggest anything of the sort with Germany, but with this new Russia, the Russia of which Naida Karetsky is a daughter, why not?  Although they will not have me back there, Russia is some day going to lay down the law to Europe.”

“I wonder whether Maggie has any ideas of the sort in her mind,” Mrs. Bollington Smith observed.  “She seems curiously abstracted to-night.”

Chalmers came grumblingly up to Mrs. Bollington Smith, with whom he was an established favourite.

“Lady Maggie is treating me disgracefully,” he complained.  “She will scarcely dance at all.  She goes around talking to every one as though it were a sort of farewell party.”

“Perhaps it may be,” Karschoff remarked quietly.

“She isn’t going away, is she?” Chalmers demanded.

“Who knows?” the Prince replied.  “Lady Maggie is one of those strange people to whom one may look with every confidence for the unexpected.”