“They really don’t count for very much,” she said, a little carelessly.  “This is entirely aunt’s Friday night gathering, and they are all her friends.  That is Lady Maltenby opposite you, and her husband on the other side of my aunt.”

“Maltenby,” he repeated.  “Ah, yes!  There is one son a Brigadier, is there not?  And another one sees sometimes about town—­a Mr. Julian Orden.”

“He is the youngest son.”

“Am I exceeding the privileges of friendship, Countess,” the Baron continued, “if I enquire whether there was not a rumour of an engagement between yourself and Mr. Orden, a few days ago?”

“It is in the air,” she admitted, “but at present nothing is settled.  Mr. Orden has peculiar habits.  He disappeared from Society altogether, a few days ago, and has only just returned.”

“A censor, was he not?”

“Something of the sort,” Catherine assented.  “He went out to France, though, and did extremely well.  He lost his foot there.”

“I have noticed that he uses a stick,” the Baron remarked.  “I always find him a young man of pleasant and distinguished appearance.”

“Well,” Catherine continued, “that is Mr. Braithwaiter the playwright, a little to the left—­the man, with the smooth grey hair and eyeglass.  Mrs. Hamilton Beardsmore you know, of course; her husband is commanding his regiment in Egypt.”

“The lady on my left?”

“Lady Grayson.  She comes up from the country once a month to buy food.  You needn’t mind her.  She is stone deaf and prefers dining to talking.”

“I am relieved,” the Baron confessed, with a little sigh.  “I addressed her as we sat down, and she made no reply.  I began to wonder if I had offended.”

“The man next me,” she went on, “is Mr. Millson Gray.  He is an American millionaire, over here to study our Y.M.C.A. methods.  He can talk of nothing else in the world but Y.M.C.A. huts and American investments, and he is very hungry.”

“The conditions,” the Baron observed, “seem favourable for a tete-a-tete.”

Catherine smiled up into his imperturbable face.  The wine had brought a faint colour to her cheeks, and the young man sighed regretfully at the idea of her prospective engagement.  He had always been one of Catherine’s most pronounced admirers.

“But what are we to talk about?” she asked.  “On the really interesting subjects your lips are always closed.  You are a marvel of discretion, you know, Baron—­even to me.”

“That is perhaps because you hide your real personality under so many aliases.”

“I must think that over,” she murmured.

“You,” he continued, “are an aristocrat of the aristocrats.  I can quite conceive that you found your position in Russia incompatible with modern ideas.  The Russian aristocracy, if you will forgive my saying so, is in for a bad time which it has done its best to thoroughly deserve.  But in England your position is scarcely so comprehensible.  Here you come to a sanely governed country, which is, to all effects and purposes, a country governed by the people for the people.  Yet here, within two years, you have made yourself one of the champions of democracy.  Why?  The people are not ill-treated.  On the contrary, I should call them pampered.”