Seated in one of the first tier boxes at the Albert Hall, in the gorgeous but obsolete uniform of a staff officer in the Russian Imperial Forces, Prince Karschoff, with Nigel on one side and Maggie on the other, gazed with keen interest at the brilliant scene below and around.  The greatest city the world has ever known seemed in those days to have entered upon an orgy of extravagance unprecedented in history.  Every box and every yard of dancing space on the floor beneath was crowded with men and women in wonderful fancy costumes, the women bedecked with jewels which eager merchants had brought together from every market of the world; even the men, in their silks and velvets and ruffles, carrying out the dominant note of wealth.  It was a ball given for charity and under royal patronage.

“All our friends seem to be here to-night,” the Prince remarked, glancing around.  “I saw Naida with her father and the eternal Oscar Immelan.  Chalmers is here with an exceedingly gay party, and yonder sits his Imperial Highness, looking very much the barbaric prince.—­By the by,” he added, glancing towards Maggie, “I thought that he was not coming?”

Maggie, who seemed a little tired, nodded quietly.  It was a week or ten days later, and an early season was now in full swing.

“He told me that he was not coming,” she said.  “I suppose the temptation to wear that gorgeous raiment was too much for him.”

“Apropos of that, there is one curious thing to be noted here with regard to clothes,” the Prince continued.  “Amongst the men, you find Venetian Doges, Chancellors, gallants of every age, but scarcely a single uniform.  In a way, this seems typical of the passing of the militarism of your country.  You are beginning to remind me of Venice in the Middle Ages.  There is a new type of brain dominant here, fat instead of muscle, a citizen aristocracy instead of the lean, clear-eyed, athletic type.”

Maggie moved in her place a little irritably.

“I am tired of warnings,” she declared.  “I wish some one could do something.”

“It is impossible,” the Prince pronounced solemnly.  “Napoleon earned for himself a greater claim to immortality when he christened the English a nation of shopkeepers than when he won the Battle of Austerlitz.  If the Englishman of to-day saw his material prosperity slipping away from him, then indeed he would be nervous and restless, ready to lean towards every wind that blew, to listen to every disquieting rumour.  To-day his bank balance is prodigious, and all’s well with the world.—­How wonderfully Prince Shan lives up to his part to-night!”

They looked across towards the opposite box, whose single occupant, in the bright green robes of a mandarin, sat looking down upon the gay throng with an absolutely immovable expression.  There was something almost regal about his air of detachment, his solitude amidst such a gay scene.