“Yes, my dear, I know I am late,” she began before she was inside the door, “but Og had so much to say, and there was a block at Hyde Park Corner.  My dear Michael, how smart you look!”

She came round the corner of the screen and the Falbes burst upon her, Hermann and Sylvia standing by the fire.  For the short, spectacled pianist there was this very tall, English-looking young man, upright and soldierly, with his handsome, boyish face and well-fitting clothes.  That was bad enough, but infinitely worse was she who was to have been the full-blown barmaid.  Instead was this magnificent girl, nearly as tall as her brother, with her small oval face crowning the column of her neck, her eyes merry, her mouth laughing at some brotherly retort that Hermann had just made.  Aunt Barbara took her in with one second’s survey—­her face, her neck, her beautiful dress, her whole air of ease and good-breeding, and gave a despairing glance at her own prickly tea-gown.  For the moment, amiably accustomed as she was to laugh at herself, she did not find it humourous.

“Miss Sylvia Falbe, Aunt Barbara,” said Michael with a little tremor in his voice; “and Mr. Hermann Falbe, Lady Barbara Jerome,” he added, rather as if he expected nobody to believe it.

Aunt Barbara made the best of it:  shook hands in her jolly manner, and burst into laughter.

“Michael, I could slay you,” she said; “but before I do that I must tell your friends all about it.  This horrible nephew of mine, Miss Falbe, promised me two weird musicians, and I expected—­I really can’t tell you what I expected—­but there were to be spectacles and velveteen coats and the general air of an afternoon concert at Clapham Junction.  But it is nice to be made such a fool of.  I feel precisely like an elderly and sour governess who has been ordered to come down to dinner so that there shan’t be thirteen.  Give me your arm, Mr. Falbe, and take me in to dinner at once, where I may drown my embarrassment in soup.  Or does Michael go in first?  Go on, wretch!”

Presently they were seated at dinner, and Aunt Barbara could not help enlarging a little on her own discomfiture.

“It is all your fault, Michael,” she said.  “You have been in London all these weeks without letting me know anything about you or your friends, or what you were doing; so naturally I supposed you were leading some obscure kind of existence.  Instead of which I find this sort of thing.  My dear, what good soup!  I shall see if I can’t induce your cook to leave you.  But bachelors always have the best of everything.  Now tell me about your visit to Germany.  Which was the point where we parted—­Baireuth, wasn’t it?  I would not go to Baireuth with anybody!”

“I went with Mr. Falbe,” said Michael.

“Ah, Mr. Falbe has not asked me yet.  I may have to revise what I say,” said Aunt Barbara daringly.

“I didn’t ask Michael,” said Hermann.  “I got into his carriage as the train was moving; and my luggage was left behind.”