as he always did.  His companion was a more striking, and even more sinister, figure, and he had the added importance of being Lord Bulmer’s oldest and most intimate friend.  He was generally known with a severe simplicity as Mr. Brain; but it was understood that he had been a judge and police official in India, and that he had enemies, who had represented his measures against crime as themselves almost criminal.  He was a brown skeleton of a man with dark, deep, sunken eyes and a black mustache that hid the meaning of his mouth.  Though he had the look of one wasted by some tropical disease, his movements were much more alert than those of his lounging companion.

“It’s all settled,” announced the lady, with great animation, when they came within hailing distance.  “You’ve all got to put on masquerade things and very likely skates as well, though the prince says they don’t go with it; but we don’t care about that.  It’s freezing already, and we don’t often get such a chance in England.”

“Even in India we don’t exactly skate all the year round,” observed Mr. Brain.

“And even Italy is not primarily associated with ice,” said the Italian.

“Italy is primarily associated with ices,” remarked Mr. Horne Fisher.  “I mean with ice cream men.  Most people in this country imagine that Italy is entirely populated with ice cream men and organ grinders.  There certainly are a lot of them; perhaps they’re an invading army in disguise.”

“How do you know they are not the secret emissaries of our diplomacy?” asked the prince, with a slightly scornful smile.  “An army of organ grinders might pick up hints, and their monkeys might pick up all sort of things.”

“The organs are organized in fact,” said the flippant Mr. Fisher.  “Well, I’ve known it pretty cold before now in Italy and even in India, up on the Himalayan slopes.  The ice on our own little round pond will be quite cozy by comparison.”

Juliet Bray was an attractive lady with dark hair and eyebrows and dancing eyes, and there was a geniality and even generosity in her rather imperious ways.  In most matters she could command her brother, though that nobleman, like many other men of vague ideas, was not without a touch of the bully when he was at bay.  She could certainly command her guests, even to the extent of decking out the most respectable and reluctant of them with her mediaeval masquerade.  And it really seemed as if she could command the elements also, like a witch.  For the weather steadily hardened and sharpened; that night the ice of the lake, glimmering in the moonlight, was like a marble floor, and they had begun to dance and skate on it before it was dark.