“Then go on to your . . . punch bowl!” he cried, and stepped aside to let me pass. Had I lingered a few minutes longer, he would have used such words as “wassail” and “negus” and “sack” to show that his acquaintance with alcohol was purely literary. Once, at an informal luncheon, he had inquired of his hostess if her servants made the mead themselves. “Mead? What is that?” she asked. He indicated the glasses of Chablis. “Oh,” said the lady, who did not like him and was also vain of her learning, “No, my athelings have lost the receipt. This is a simple grape concoction made by the Christians in Gaul.”

I was halfway down the stairs when he leaned over the bannister and implored, “Do meet Mr. Hornblower. He wants us all to come to tea at his house tomorrow. He’s terribly anxious to meet you and says he will be ever so interested to hear your political conflicts—I told him, you see, that you were half Russian and half German.”

As the next day was Sunday, I could not go. “I will be away tomorrow,” I told him.

“Oh, but you must come,” he protested urgently, “because Mrs. Hornblower will be there too!” as though, if it were a rare thing to meet Mr. Hornblower it was an even rarer one to meet his wife. I repeated my refusal and Mr. Pingrey withdrew his head but not before he had stuck out his tongue at me like a peckish child and flung out, “Crosspatch!”

I had gained the outer hall when the door to the dining-room opened and the chauffeur shot past me like someone on a surf-board. He was carried along over the carpet by the leashed Doberman and the boxer to whom he applied, under his breath, the word “bitches” with venomous accuracy. Through the door I could see the supper table with its dishes arranged as tastefully as if they had been bouquets of flowers and were to serve no purpose other than ornament. The Countess had been planning this for months, ordering the strangest of the foods through importers, scouring Boston and New York for the finest Liebfraumilch and Niersteiner and champagne, herself supervising the decanting of the sweet wines and the liqueurs, and living through each step of the lengthy preparation of the daube glacé as if upon the proper contents of the bags of herbs depended her social success.