"I suppose so," drawled Lorian, glancing for the twentieth time at the yet vacant doorway by the stair-foot. "The idea of architects and artists and other constitutionally languid people, having to write books, fills my soul with black horror." "He had a glorious time with our old panelling, Harry," laughed the Colonel, waving his cigar vaguely toward the panelled walls and nooks which gradually were receding into the twilight. "Yes," said my friend. "He was here quite an unconscionable time--even for an old school chum of the proprietor. I hope you counted the spoons when he left!" Lorian's disrespectful references to Sir Julius, his father, were characteristic; for he reverences that famous artist with the double love of a son and a pupil. "Of course we did," chuckled Reynor. "Nothing missing, my boy!" "That's funny," drawled Lorian. "Because if he didn't steal it from here I can't imagine from where he stole it!" "Stole what, Harry?" "Whatever some chap broke into his studio for last night!" "Eh!" cried the Colonel, sitting suddenly very upright. "Into your father's studio? Burglars?" "Suppose so," was the reply. "They took nothing that I was aware to be in his possession, though the place was ransacked. I naturally concluded that they had taken something that I was _unaware_ to be in his----Ah!" Sybil Reynor entered by the door which, for the past twenty minutes, had been the focus of Lorian's gaze. The gathering dusk precluded the possibility of my seeing with certainty, but I think her face flushed as her dark eyes rested upon my friend. Her beauty is not of the kind which needs deceptive half-lights to perfect it, but there in the dimness, as she came towards us, she looked very lovely and divinely graceful. I did not envy Lorian his good fortune; but I suppressed a sigh when I saw how my existence had escaped the girl's notice and how the world in her eyes, contained only a Henry Lorian, R.I. Her mother entered shortly afterwards and a general conversation arose, which continued until the arrival of Ralph Edie and his sister. They were accompanied by Felix Hulme; and their advent completed the small party expected at Ragstaff Park. "You late arrivals," said Lorian, "have only just time to dress, unless you want to miss everything but the nuts!" "Oh, Harry!" said Mrs. Reynor, "you are as bad as your father!" "Worse," said Lorian promptly. "I am altogether more rude and have a bigger appetite!" With such seeming trivialities, then, opened the drama of Ragstaff, the drama in which Fate had cast four of us for leading rôles. II Following dinner, the men--or, as my friend has it, "the gunners"--drifted into the hall. The hall at Ragstaff Park is fitted as a smoking lounge. It dates back to Tudor days and affords some magnificent examples of mediæval panelling. At every point the eye meets the device of a man with a ragged staff--from which the place derives its name, and which is the crest of the Reynors.