Sloane Square

London, S.W.I

Dearest Lisle,

Cousin Cécile says you are invited to Duke’s Gate for the week-end on Saturday the third. I shall come down to Benham in order to drive you back. Did you know she wants to marry me to Félicité? I’m really not at all keen and neither, luckily, is Fée. She’s fallen in a big way for an extremely dubious number who plays a piano-accordion in Cousin George’s band. I imagine there’s a full-dress row in the offing à cause, as Cousin Cécile would say, de the band and particularly de the dubious number whose name is Carlos something. They aren’t ’alf cups of tea are they? Why do you go away to foreign parts? I shall arrive at about 5 p.m. on the Saturday.

Love,

Ned

From the Monogram gossip column:

From Mr. Carlos Rivera to Miss Félicité de Suze:

Austerly Square

London, S.W.I

Listen Glamorous,

You cannot do this thing to me. I am not an English Honourable This or Lord That to sit complacent while my woman makes a fool of me. No. With me it is all or nothing. I am a scion of an ancient house. I do not permit trespassers and I am tired, I am very tired indeed, of waiting. I wait no longer. You announce immediately our engagement or — finish! It is understood?

Adios

Carlos de Rivera

Telegram from Miss Félicité de Suze to Miss Carlisle Wayne:

Telegram from Miss Carlisle Wayne to Lady Pastern and Bagott:

CHAPTER II

THE PERSONS ASSEMBLE

At precisely eleven o’clock in the morning G.P.F. walked in at a side door of the Harmony offices in 5 Materfamilias Lane, E.G.2. He went at once to his own room. Private G.P.F. was written in white letters on the door. He unwound the scarf with which he was careful to protect his nose and mouth from the fog, and hung it, together with his felt hat and overcoat, on a peg behind his desk. He then assumed a green eye-shade, and shot a bolt in his door. By so doing he caused a notice, Engaged, to appear on the outside.