“The party, how has it gone off?” asked Lena quickly.

“Don’t speak of it!” was the tragical answer; “why do I always have such rotten luck?”

“But what has happened?”

“It has been awful. Hyenas could not have behaved with greater savagery. Sir Richard said so, and he has been in countries where hyenas live, so he ought to know. They actually came to blows!”

“Blows?”

“Blows and curses. It really might have been a scene from one of Hogarth’s pictures. I never felt so humiliated in my life. What the servants must have thought!”

“But who were the offenders?”

“Oh, naturally the very two that we took all the trouble about.”