Jane put her handkerchief to her lips. There was a period of silence. The Count appeared to be thinking with great intensity. He had a harassed expression about the corners of his nose. It was he who broke the silence. He broke it with a most tremendous sneeze.
"The beastly snuff," he said in apology.
Cricklewick's voice seemed to act as an echo to the remark.
"The Right-Honourable Mrs. Priestly-Duff," he announced, and an angular, middle-aged lady in a rose-coloured gown entered the room. She had a very long nose and prominent teeth; her neck was of amazing length and appeared to be attached to her shoulders by means of vertical, skin-covered ropes, running from torso to points just behind her ears, where they were lost in a matting of faded, straw-coloured hair. On second thought, it may be simpler to remark that her neck was amazingly scrawny. It will save confusion. Her voice was a trifle strident and her French execrable.
"Isn't it awful?" she said as she joined the trio at the fireplace. "I thought I'd never get here. Two hours coming, my dear, and I must be starting home at once if I want to get there before midnight."
"The Princess will be here," said the Marchioness.
"I'll wait fifteen minutes," said the new-comer crisply, pulling up her gloves. "I've had a trying day, Marchioness. Everything has gone wrong,—even the drains. They're frozen as tight as a drum and heaven knows when they'll get them thawed out! Who ever heard of such weather in March?"
"Ah, my dear Mrs. Priestly-Duff, you should not forget the beautiful sunshine we had yesterday," said the Count cheerily.
"Precious little good it does today," she retorted, looking down upon him from a lofty height, and as if she had not noticed his presence before. "When did you come in, Count?"
"It is quite likely the Princess will not venture out in such weather," interposed the Marchioness, sensing squalls.
"Well, I'll stop a bit anyway and get my feet warm. I hope she doesn't come. She is a good deal of a wet blanket, you must admit."
"Wet blankets," began the Count argumentatively, and then, catching a glance from the Marchioness, cleared his throat, blew his nose, and mumbled something about poor people who had no blankets at all, God help them on such a night as this.
Lady Jane had turned away from the group and was idly turning the leaves of the Illustrated London News. The smallest intelligence would have grasped the fact that Mrs. Priestly-Duff was not a genial soul.
"Who else is coming?" she demanded, fixing the little hostess with the stare that had just been removed from the back of Lady Jane's head.
Cricklewick answered from the doorway.
"Lord Temple. Baron—ahem!—Whiskers—eh? Baron Wissmer. Prince Waldemar de Bosky. Count Wilhelm Frederick Von Blitzen."
Four young men advanced upon the Marchioness, Lord Temple in the van. He was a tall, good-looking chap, with light brown hair that curled slightly above the ears, and eyes that danced.
"This, my dear Marchioness, is my friend, Baron Wissmer," he said, after bending low over her hand.
The Baron, whose broad hands were encased in immaculate white gloves that failed by a wide margin to button across his powerful wrists, smiled sheepishly as he enveloped her fingers in his huge palm.
"It is good of you to let me come, Marchioness," he said awkwardly, a deep flush spreading over his sea-tanned face. "If I manage to deport myself like the bull in the china shop, pray lay it to clumsiness and not to ignorance. It has been a very long time since I touched the hand of a Marchioness."
"Small people, like myself, may well afford to be kind and forgiving to giants," said she, smiling. "Dear me, how huge you are."
"I was once in the Emperor's Guard," said he, straightening his figure to its full six feet and a half. "The Blue Hussars. I may add with pride that I was not so horribly clumsy in regimentals. After all, it is the clothes that makes the man." He smiled as he looked himself over. "I shall not be at all offended or even embarrassed if you say 'goodness, how you have grown!'"
"The best tailor in London made that suit of clothes," said Lord Temple, surveying his friend with an appraising eye. Out of the corner of the same eye he explored the region beyond the group that now clustered about the hostess. Evidently he discovered what he was looking for. Leaving the Baron high and dry, he skirted the edge of the group and, with beaming face, came to Lady Jane.
"My family is of Vienna," the Baron was saying to the Marchioness, "but of late years I have called Constantinople my home."
"I understand," said she gently. She asked no other question, but, favouring him with a kindly smile, turned her attention to the men who lurked insignificantly in the shadow of his vast bulk.
The Prince was a pale, dreamy young man with flowing black hair that must have been a constant menace to his vision, judging by the frequent and graceful sweep of his long, slender hand in brushing the encroaching forelock from his eyes, over which it spread briefly in the nature of a veil. He had the fingers of a musician, the bearing of a violinist. His head drooped slightly toward his left shoulder, which was always raised a trifle above the level of the right. And there was in his soft brown eyes the faraway look of the detached. The insignia of his house hung suspended by a red ribbon in the centre of his white shirt front, while on the lapel of his coat reposed the emblem of the Order of the Golden Star. He was a Pole.
Count Von Blitzen, a fair-haired, pink-skinned German, urged himself forward with typical, not-to-be-denied arrogance, and crushed the fingers of the Marchioness in his fat hand. His broad face beamed with an all-enveloping smile.
"Only patriots and lovers venture forth on such nights as this," he said, in a guttural voice that rendered his French almost laughable.
"With an occasional thief or varlet," supplemented the Marchioness.
"Ach, Dieu," murmured the Count.
Fresh arrivals were announced by Cricklewick. For the next ten or fifteen minutes they came thick and fast, men and women of all ages, nationality and condition, and not one of them without a high-sounding title. They disposed themselves about the vast room, and a subdued vocal hubbub ensued. If here and there elderly guests, with gnarled and painfully scrubbed hands, preferred isolation and the pictorial contents of a magazine from the land of their nativity, it was not with snobbish intentions. They were absorbing the news from "home," in the regular weekly doses.
The regal, resplendent Countess du Bara, of the Opera, held court in one corner of the room. Another was glorified by a petite baroness from the Artists' Colony far down-town, while a rather dowdy lady with a coronet monopolized the attention of a small group in the centre of the room.
Lady Jane Thorne and Lord Temple sat together in a dim recess beyond the great chair of state, and conversed in low and far from impersonal tones.
Cricklewick appeared in the doorway and in his most impressive manner announced Her Royal Highness, the Princess Mariana Theresa Sebastano Michelini Celestine di Pavesi.
And with the entrance of royalty, kind reader, you may consider yourself introduced, after a fashion, to the real aristocracy of the City of New York, United States of America,—the titled riff-raff of the world's cosmopolis.
CHAPTER III
THE CITY OF MASKS
NEW YORK is not merely a melting pot for the poor and the humble of the lands of the earth. In its capacious depths, unknown and unsuspected, float atoms of an entirely different sort: human beings with the blood of the high-born