“That preposterous woman is in the refreshment-room.”

Thus they spoke of the great lecturer on Prison Wrongs.

“You have seen the Bukatys?” inquired Lady Orlay.  “I called on them the moment I received your note from Paris.  They are here to-night.  I have never seen such a complexion.  Is it characteristic of Poland?”

“I think so,” replied Deulin, with unusual shortness, looking away across the room.

Lady Orlay’s clever eyes flashed round for a moment, and she looked grave.  It was as if she had pushed open the door of another person’s room.

“I like the old man,” she said, with a change of tone.  “What is he?”

“He is a rebel.”

“Proscribed?”

“No—­they dare not do that.  He was a great man in the sixties.  You remember how in the great insurrection an unfailing supply of arms and ammunition came pouring into Poland over the Austrian frontier—­more arms than the national government could find men for.”

“Yes, I remember that.”

“That is the man,” said Deulin, with a nod of his head in the direction of the Prince Bukaty, who was talking and laughing near at hand.

“And the girl—­it is very sad—­I like her very much.  She is gay and brave.”

“Ah!” said Deulin, “when a woman is gay and brave—­and young—­Heaven help us.”

“Thank you, Monsieur Deulin.”

“And when she is gay and brave, and . . . old . . . milady—­God keep her,” he said with a grave bow.

“I liked her at once.  I shall be glad to do anything I can, you know.  She has a great capacity for making friends.”

“She has already made a few—­this evening,” put in the Frenchman, with a significant gesture of his gloved hand.

“Ah!”

“Not one who can hurt her, I think.  I can see to that.  The usual enemy—­of a pretty girl—­that is all.”

He broke off with a sudden laugh.  Once or twice he had laughed like that, and his manner was restless and uneasy.  In a younger man, or one less experienced and hardened, the observant might have suspected some hidden excitement.  Lady Orlay turned and looked at him curiously, with the frankness of a friendship which had lasted nearly half a century.

“What is it?”

He laughed—­but he laughed uneasily—­and spread out his hands in a gesture of bewilderment.

“What is what?”

Lady Orlay looked at her fan reflectively as she opened and closed it.

“Reginald Cartoner has turned up quite suddenly,” she said.  “Mr. Mangles has arrived from Washington.  You are here from Paris.  A few minutes ago old Karl Steinmetz, who still watches the nations en amateur, shook hands with me.  This Prince Bukaty is not a nonentity.  All the Vultures are assembling, Paul.  I can see that.  I can see that my husband sees it.”

“Ah! you and yours are safe now.  You are in the backwater—­you and Orlay—­quietly moored beneath the trees.”