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IV

But Nyla's confidence abated when she found that she had to pour the tea—a beverage little drunk in Ilyria—with two footmen standing attentively beside her. If they had not been there she could have studied and probably solved the complicated array of jugs, dishes, napkins, spirit lamps and other utensils; but those watchful figures frightened her. The obvious course was to use some of everything, and her father sat innocently drinking from a cup that contained both cream and lemon, unaware that this would have grieved the British foreign office. There was a generous assortment of rich but flimsy sandwiches and pastries, but the hungry President, conscious of scrutiny, was too uneasy to do them justice. He sat some distance from the source of supply, with an