They spent the following day wandering with the crowds that fill the Munich streets on bright Sundays, and the Darks arrived at midnight. The next morning they all went to the lake, this time finding a very different class of skaters in possession. Munich has a small fashionable set whose members dress as fashionable people do everywhere. To-day, the women in their short cloth or tweed frocks and rich furs, their faces rosy¹ with cold and exercise, enhanced the glittering beauty of the landscape; and the young officers were quite as decorative².

“Some class,” said Tay. “In Europe there’s no choice between the aristocrats³ and the peasants. In my country, now, you couldn’t take your oath that all these birds of paradise weren’t clever shop-girls, until you got close enough to take notes. But here even a snub-nosed baroness⁴, dressed like a housekeeper⁵, shows her class.”

“That’s about all we’ve got left,” said Dark. “You helped yourself to a sort of ready-made imitation of it, as you did to everything else it took us twenty centuries to grind out. Think you might be generous and give us a little hustle⁶ in return. Can I help you, Mrs. France?”

He buckled⁷ on her skates and they joined the throng⁸ on the ice, Tay following with Ishbel. Lord Dark, something in the fashion of his wife, was a man of almost romantic appearance covering a practical character and a keen alert brain. He was as pure a Saxon in type as still persists, with fair hair and moustache, straight proud features, and languid blue eyes in thick brown frames. His tall figure was lean and sinewy⁹, but carried listlessly. Thrown on his own resources, he would not have been driven on to the stage, out to South Africa, or become a vague “something in the City”; he would

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