Lady Blythebury had turned her husband's house into a fairy palace of delight.

She stood in the doorway of the ballroom, her florid face beaming above her Elizabethan ruffles, looking in upon the gay and ever-shifting scene which she had called into being.
"I feel as if I had stepped into an Arabian Night," she laughed to one of her guests, who stood beside her.

He was dressed as a court jester, and carried a wand which he flourished dramatically.

He wore a close-fitting black mask.
"There is certainly magic abroad," he declared, in a rich, Irish brogue that Lady Blythebury smiled to hear.

For she also was Irish to the backbone.
"You know something of the art yourself, Captain Sullivan ?" she asked.
She knew the man for a friend of her husband's.