"I will do my very best." "If you are sacrificing any important engagements of your own for the next two days, you won't suffer for it in the end," remarked the Foreign Secretary meaningly.
No doubt Ivor saw the consulship at Algiers dancing before his eyes, bound up with an engagement to Di, just as a slice of rich plum cake and white bride cake are tied together with bows of satin ribbons sometimes, in America.

I didn't want him to have the consulship, because getting that would perhaps mean getting Di, too.
"Thank you," said Ivor.
"And what hotel shall you choose in Paris ?" asked the Foreign Secretary.
"It should be a good one, I don't need to remind you, where Mademoiselle de Renzie could go without danger of compromising herself, in case she should be recognised in spite of the veil she's pretty certain to wear.
Yet it shouldn't be in too central a situation." "Shall it be the Elysee Palace ?" asked Ivor.
"That will do very well," replied the other, after reflecting for an instant.

And I could have clapped my hands, in what Ivor would call my "impish joy," when it was settled; for the Elysee Palace is where Lord and Lady Mountstuart stop when they visit Paris, and they'd been talking of running over next day with Lord Robert West, to look at a wonderful new motor car for sale there--one that a Rajah had ordered to be made for him, but died before it was finished.

Lady Mountstuart always has one new fad every six months at least, and her latest is to drive a motor car herself.

Lord Robert is a great expert--can make a motor, I believe, or take it to pieces and put it together again; and he'd been insisting for days that she would be able to drive this Rajah car.