Lady Carey turned her left shoulder upon them.

“I beg,” she said, “that you will leave me alone with the music.  I prefer it.”

The Prince suddenly stood upon the threshold.  His hand rested lightly upon the arm of another man.

“Come in, Brott,” he said.  “The women will be charmed to see you.  And I don’t suppose they’ve read your speeches.  Countess, here is the man who counts all equal under the sun, who decries class, and recognises no social distinctions.  Brott was born to lead a revolution.  He is our natural enemy.  Let us all try to convert him.”

Brott was pale, and deep new lines were furrowed on his face.  Nevertheless he smiled faintly as he bowed over Lucille’s fingers.

“My introduction,” he remarked, “is scarcely reassuring.  Yet here at least, if anywhere in the world, we should all meet upon equal ground.  Music is a universal leveler.”

“And we haven’t a chance,” Lady Carey remarked with uplifted eyebrows, “of listening to a bar of it.”

Lucille welcomed the newcomer coldly.  Nevertheless, he manoeuvred himself into the place by her side.  She took up her fan and commenced swinging it thoughtfully.

“You are surprised to see me here?” he murmured.

“Yes!” she admitted.

He looked wearily away from the stage up into her face.

“And I too,” he said.  “I am surprised to find myself here!”

“I pictured you,” she remarked, “as immersed in affairs.  Did I not hear something of a Radical ministry with you for Premier?”

“It has been spoken of,” he admitted.

“Then I really cannot see,” she said, “what you are doing here.”

“Why not?” he asked doggedly.

She shrugged her shoulders.

“In the first place,” she said, “you ought to be rushing about amongst your supporters, keeping them up to the mark, and all that sort of thing.  And in the second—­”

“Well?”

“Are we not the very people against whom you have declared war?”

“I have declared war against no people,” he answered.  “It is systems and classes, abuses, injustice against which I have been forced to speak.  I would not deprive your Order of a single privilege to which they are justly entitled.  But you must remember that I am a people’s man.  Their cause is mine.  They look to me as their mouthpiece.”

Lucille shrugged her shoulders.

“You cannot evade the point,” she said.  “If you are the, what do you call it, the mouthpiece of the people, I do not see how you can be anything else than the enemy of the aristocracy.”

“The aristocracy?  Who are they?” he asked.  “I am the enemy of all those who, because they possess an ancient name and inherited wealth, consider themselves the God-appointed bullies of the poor, dealing them out meagre charities, lordly patronage, an unspoken but bitter contempt.  But the aristocracy of the earth are not of such as these.  Your class are furnishing the world with advanced thinkers every year, every month!  Inherited prejudices can never survive the next few generations.  The fusion of classes must come.”