So it was arranged. Bertram Fraser was an old family friend of the Jardines'. His father was still the rector of their Northumberland parish, and he and Gregory and Oliver had hunted and fished and shot and gone to Oxford together. Bertram had been a traveller in strange countries since those days, had written one or two clever books and was now in Parliament. The Overtons, also country neighbours, were fond of music as well as of hunting, and Mr. Canning-Thompson was an eminent, if rather ponderous, Q.C., for whose wife, the gentle and emaciated Lady Mary, Gregory had a special affection. She was a great philanthropist and a patient student of early Italian art, and he and she talked gardens and pictures together. Betty and Oliver were the first to arrive on the festal night, Betty's efficiency, expressed by all her diamonds and a dress of rose-coloured velvet, making up for whatever there might be of inefficiency in Karen's appearance and deportment. Karen was still, touchingly so to her husband's eyes, the little Hans Andersen heroine in appearance. She wore to-night the white silk dress and the wreath of little white roses. Oliver and Gregory chatted desultorily until the Byngs arrived. Oliver was fair and ruddy and his air of dozing contentment was always vexatious to his younger brother. He had every reason for contentment. Betty's money had securely buttressed the family fortunes and he had three delightful little boys to buttress Betty's money. Gregory grew a little out of temper after talking for five minutes to Oliver and this was not a fortunate mood in which to realise, as the Montgomerys, the Overtons and the Canning-Thompsons followed the Byngs, at eight-fifteen, that Madame von Marwitz was probably going to be late. At eight-thirty, Karen, looking at him with some anxiety expressed in her raised brows, silently conveyed to him her fear that the soup, at the very least, would be spoiled. At eight-forty Betty murmured to Karen that they had perhaps better begin without Madame von Marwitz--hadn't they? She must, for some reason, be unable to come. Dinner was for eight. "Oh, but we must wait longer," said Karen. "She would have telephoned--or Mrs. Forrester would--if she had not been coming. Tante is always late; but always, always," she added, without condemnation if with anxiety. "And there is the bell now. Yes, I heard it."