“I know quite well what you feel,” she said in her slow, gentle voice. “It’s the herding together of rich people to eat brilliantly, while all the great half of the world have no brilliance and no dinner, and I think it is so good of you to come. I’ve only just _really_ one or two to-night, so I hope you won’t find us very worldly.” Cyril Johnstone had blushed at his cousin’s speech, but now that his hostess paused he said gently, “Mary was so very sorry she could not come.” “Dear Mary,” Edith murmured as she glided across the room to welcome two men who had entered at the same time—Jack Hurstly and a young doctor, a man of good family and even better brains. “How good of you to come, doctor!” said she, her eyes sparkling their most vivid welcome. “One feels,” she said, turning to the young clergyman, “with busy men like you what a debt of gratitude one owes. Now you, Captain Hurstly,” she added (for the first time addressing Jack), “had, I am sure, nothing to give up?” “Everything to attract, certainly,” said Jack with a smile at Gladys, who was glancing with laughing, observant eyes from one to the other. Dinner was announced, and Edith, taking the young priest’s arm, followed the rest of the party. She was thinking it extremely stupid of dear Mary to have a dark-room headache, and she was talking to Mr. Johnstone on the marvellous utility of Bands of Hope. “Yes,” she said, glancing over the flower-decked table, “it’s the name itself. Hope! What a lot it calls up, doesn’t it? Spring mornings, one imagines, and skies too blue to deny one anything. There’s something in the word which makes one think of waves.” “Because they break themselves on the rocks?” suggested Gladys, “or cover quicksands?” “It’s a word,” said the doctor, smiling, “with a very expansive meaning, and a use even more expanded than its meaning.” Mr. Johnstone looked across to Mrs. le Mentier. “It’s one of the cardinal virtues,” he said gently. “And they,” said his cousin, looking at Jack, “always close a conversation, because you see it’s so inconvenient to have to take off one’s shoes.” Mr. Johnstone looked shocked, and Edith started another subject. “My husband,” she said, “is away—fishing, I think it is. He has, poor man, a deadly feud against all animal nature, and he spends his time trying to exterminate it. I must confess it seems to me rather a hopeless quest.” “Don’t you English say,” asked Gladys of the doctor, “that it’s strengthening to the character?” The doctor smiled. “More to the muscles than to the character, I should fancy,” he said. “But isn’t it one of your tests of a character,” she persisted, “in England that it should _have_ fine muscles?” The conversation became international. Edith watched, but took no part; she was listening to Jack, who was not talking to her. He was instead appealing to Cyril Johnstone. “Are you at all interested,” he asked, “in those slum clubs?” The priest’s face brightened.