Mrs Ingram disapproved of anachronisms, and set her face sternly against electric lighting in her ancestral home. To-night, as every night, the retiring guests helped themselves to one of a row of silver candlesticks on a table near the staircase, and lit it with a match before beginning the ascent. Lilith was the last of the ladies to receive her candle; the last to receive the salutations of the four men. She raised her face to each in turn, and gazed deep in his eyes, while their hands met and parted, and to three men out of the four came, at that moment, a vision and a dream. The man who had wished for love, thrilled at the thought of a woman's eyes looking out of an unknown face, which yet would share some magical quality with those now looking into his own. John Malham saw in a vision an icy peak, sharp and white, and beautiful with a deadly beauty. The touch of her hand in his was cold and light as a snowflake. Val Lessing looked at the white column of her throat, and beheld round it ropes of pearls--lustrous, shimmering pearls for which a man might venture his life; but Francis, the giant, had no illusions--he was sleepy, and he thought of bed. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Alone in the great hall, husband and wife stood over the dying logs. "Well, wonderful woman!" he said, "you have given us a wonderful evening, and now we must stand by, and watch those nine strugglers in the maelstrom. It will be interesting; it will be awful. How many of them do you suppose will win through to their goal?" Mrs Ingram did not answer his question; she asked another of her own accord: "Did you notice," she said softly, "that no one, not one of them--" "Wished your wish?" he finished for her. "Yes! I noticed!" He laid his hands on her shoulders, and they stood together, gazing deeply into each other's eyes. "But," she sighed softly, "it is the best!" CHAPTER TWO. THE GIRL WHO WISHED FOR MONEY. Claudia Berrington prided herself that if she had many faults, she had at least one supreme virtue--she was honest! She condescended to no subterfuges, no half-truths, no beatings about the bush. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth fell from her coral lips with a nakedness which astonished her hearers, and this despite the fact that few people had less consideration for honesty for honesty's sake. There was no "I can, because I ought" in Claudia Berrington's composition; her outspokenness was simply a means to an end. Very early in life her sharp wits had mastered the fact that honesty was the best policy, and that to speak the truth was at once to disarm criticism and to avoid the danger of pitfalls.