“They’re not so bad, are they, Bobby?” asked Lady Agnes coolly, going to Browne’s side at the railing.  Chase hesitated a moment and then walked over to Drusilla Browne, who was looking pensively into the courtyard below.  He was sorry for her.  She laughed and chatted with him for ten minutes, but there was a strained note in her voice that did not escape his notice.  It may not have been true that Browne was in love with Lady Deppingham, but it was more than evident that his wife felt convinced that he was.

“Splendid!” was the sudden exclamation of Drusilla’s vagrant lord.  The others looked up, interested.  “Say, everybody, Lady Agnes and I have hit upon a ripping scheme.  It’s great!”

“To better our position?” asked Deppingham.

“Position?  What—­oh, I see.  Not exactly.  What do you say to a charity ball, the proceeds to go to the survivors of the plague we’re expected to have?”

The Princess gave a quick, involuntary look at Chase’s face.  Browne’s tall fellow-countryman was now leaning against the rail beside her chair.  She saw a look of surprised amusement flit across his face, succeeded almost instantly by a hard, dark frown of displeasure.  He waited a moment and then looked down at her with unmistakable shame and disapproval in his eyes.  Bobby Browne was going on volubly about the charity ball, Deppingham listening with a fair show of tolerance.

“We might just as well be merry while we can,” he was saying.  “Think of what the French did at the time of the Commune.  They danced and died like ladies and gentlemen.  And our own forefathers, Chase, at the time of the American Revolution—­remember them, too.  They gave their balls and parties right under the muzzles of British cannon.  And Vicksburg—­New Orleans, too—­in the Civil War!  Think of ’em!  Why shouldn’t we be as game and as gay as they?”

“But they were earnest in their distractions,” observed Deppingham, with a glance at his wife’s eager face.  “This could be nothing more than a travesty, a jest.”

“Oh, let us be sports,” cried Lady Agnes, falling into an Americanism readily.  “It may be a jest, but what odds?  Something to kill time with.”

Chase and the Princess watched Deppingham’s expressionless face as he listened to his wife and Bobby Browne.  They were talking of arrangements.  He looked out over the roof of the opposite wing, beyond the group of Persians, and nodded his head from time to time.  There was no smile on his lips, however.

“I don’t like Mr. Browne,” whispered Genevra suddenly.  Chase did not reply.  She waited a moment and then went on.  “He is not like Deppingham.  Do you understand?”

Lady Deppingham came over to them at that instant, her eyes sparkling.