“If it were not a perfectly fatuous question, I should ask what you were doing here, Jimmy?” Francis remarked.

“I always come for Sir Timothy’s big parties, sir,” Jimmy explained.  “Your first visit, isn’t it, sir?”

“My first,” Francis assented.

“And mine,” his companion echoed.

“What can I have the pleasure of making for you, sir?” the man enquired.

“A difficult question,” Francis admitted.  “It is barely an hour and a half since we finished diner.  On the other hand, we are certainly going to have some supper some time or other.”

Jimmy nodded understandingly.

“Leave it to me, sir,” he begged.

He served them with a foaming white concoction in tall glasses.  A genuine lime bobbed up and down in the liquid.

“Sir Timothy has the limes sent over from his own estate in South America,” Jimmy announced.  “You will find some things in that drink you don’t often taste.”

The two men sipped their beverage and pronounced it delightful.  Jimmy leaned a little across the table.

“A big thing on to-night, isn’t there, sir?” he asked cautiously.

“Is there?” Francis replied.  “You mean—?”

Jimmy motioned towards the open window, close to which the river was flowing by.

“You going down, sir?”

Francis shook his head dubiously.

“Where to?”

The bartender looked with narrowed eyes from one to the other of the two men.  Then he suddenly froze up.  Wilmore leaned a little further over the impromptu counter.

“Jimmy,” he asked, “what goes on here besides dancing and boxing and gambling?”

“I never heard of any gambling,” Jimmy answered, shaking his head.  “Sir Timothy doesn’t care about cards being played here at all.”

“What is the principal entertainment, then?” Francis demanded.  “The boxing?”

The bartender shook his head.

“No one understands very much about this house, sir,” he said, “except that it offers the most wonderful entertainment in Europe.  That is for the guests to find out, though.  We servants have to attend to our duties.  Will you let me mix you another drink, sir?”

“No, thanks,” Francis answered.  “The last was too good to spoil.  But you haven’t answered my question, Jimmy.  What did you mean when you asked if we were going down?”

Jimmy’s face had become wooden.

“I meant nothing, sir,” he said.  “Sorry I spoke.”

The two men turned away.  They recognised many acquaintances in the supper-room, and in the long gallery beyond, where many couples were dancing now to the music of a wonderful orchestra.  By slow stages they made their way back to the winter-garden, where Lady Cynthia and Margaret were still lost in admiration of their surroundings.  They all walked the whole length of the place.  Beyond, down a flight of stone steps, was a short, paved way to