Lady Sellingworth had occasionally been to Coombe Hall, but for several years now she had ceased from going there. She did not care to show her white hair and lined face in Mrs. Ackroyde’s rooms, which were always thronged with women she knew too well and with men who had ceased from admiring her. And she was no longer deeply interested in the gossip of a world in which formerly she had been one of the ruling spirits. She was, therefore, rather surprised at receiving a note from Mrs. Ackroyde soon after her return from Geneva urging her to motor to Coombe on the following Sunday for lunch. “I suppose there will be the usual crowd,” Mrs. Ackroyde wrote. “And I’ve asked Alick Craven and two or three who don’t often come. What do you think of Beryl Van Tuyn’s transformation into an heiress? I hear she’s come into over three million dollars. I suppose she’ll be more unconventional than ever now. Minnie Birchington met her just after her father’s death, in fact the very day his death was announced in the papers. She’d just been to tea with a marvellously good-looking man called something Arabian, who has taken a flat in Rose Tree Gardens opposite to Minnie’s. Evidently this is the newest way of going into deep mourning.” Lady Sellingworth hesitated for some time before answering this note. Probably, indeed almost certainly, she would have refused the invitation but for the last three sentences about Beryl Van Tuyn. She did not want to see the girl again, for she could not help hating her. She had, of course, sent a note of sympathy to Claridge’s, and had received an affectionate reply, which she had torn up and burnt after reading it. But she had not gone to tell her regret at this death to Beryl, and Beryl had expressed no wish to see her. In her heart Lady Sellingworth hated humbug, and she knew, of course, that any pretence of real friendship between Beryl and her would be humbug in an acute form. She might in the future sometimes have to pretend, but she was resolved not to rush upon insincerity. If Beryl sought her out again she would play her part of friend gallantly to conceal her wounds. But she would certainly not seek out Beryl. She had not seen Craven since her return to London. In spite of her anger against him, which was complicated by a feeling of almost contemptuous disgust, she longed to see him again. Each day, when she had sat in her drawing-room in the late afternoon and had heard Murgatroyd’s heavy step outside and the opening of the door, her heart beat fast, and she had thought, “Can it be he?” Each day, after the words “Sir Seymour Portman!” her heart had sunk and she had felt bitter and weary. And now came this invitation, putting it in her power to meet Craven again naturally. Should she go?