“Something remarkable, to make you late for a meal,” said the Gräfin.

“Elsa has run away with the Rodenstahls’ chauffeur!”

“Kolossal!”

“Such a thing as that no one in our family has ever done,” gasped the baroness.

“Perhaps he didn’t appeal to them in the same way,” suggested the Gräfin judicially.

The baroness began to feel that she was not getting the astonishment and sympathy to which her catastrophe entitled her.

“At any rate,” she snapped, “now she can’t marry Wratislav.”

“She couldn’t in any case,” said the Gräfin; “he left suddenly for abroad last night.”

“For abroad! Where?”