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“Were they looking very happy?” asked the Baroness.

“Wratislav was wearing some new English clothes, so, of course, he was quite happy. I overheard him telling Toni a rather amusing story about a nun and a mousetrap, which won’t bear repetition. Elsa was telling every one else a witticism about the Triple Alliance being like a paper umbrella–which seems to bear repetition with Christian fortitude.”

“Did they seem much wrapped up in each other?”

“To be candid, Elsa looked as if she were wrapped up in a horse- rug. And why let her wear saffron colour?”

“I always think it goes with her complexion.”

“Unfortunately it doesn’t. It stays with it. Ugh. Don’t forget, you’re lunching with me on Thursday.”

The Baroness was late for her luncheon engagement the following Thursday.

“Imagine what has happened!” she screamed as she burst into the room.

“Something remarkable, to make you late for a meal,” said the Gr�fin.

“Elsa has run away with the Rodenstahls’ chauffeur!”

“Kolossal!”

“Such a thing as that no one in our family has ever done,” gasped the Baroness.

“Perhaps he didn’t appeal to them in the same way,” suggested the Gr�fin judicially.

The Baroness began to feel that she was not getting the astonishment and sympathy to which her catastrophe entitled her.

“At any rate,” she snapped, “now she can’t marry Wratislav.”

“She couldn’t in any case,” said the Gr�fin; he left suddenly for abroad last night.”

“For abroad! Where?”

“For Mexico, I believe.”

“Mexico! But what for? Why Mexico?”

“The English have a proverb, ‘Conscience makes cowboys of us all.'”

“I didn’t know Wratislav had a conscience.”

“My dear Sophie, he hasn’t. It’s other people’s consciences that send one abroad in a hurry. Let’s go and eat.”