It was just eight o'clock when the sound of the gong pealed through the house, and Mr and Mrs Ingram took their stand in the great hall, to watch the procession of their guests down the stairway. First of all came a tall man, muscular and healthy, a typical country squire, the sunburn of his skin showing in marked contrast to his white shirt and waistcoat. A handsome man, with an air of agreeable content, and beside him a stout matron, her large face wreathed in smiles, her dress a handsome creation of the year before last. Behind her, creeping close to the wall, a plain, insignificant woman trailed a robe of magnificent gold brocade, while the glitter of diamonds on neck and head lent an additional wanness to the pinched face. This was the Lady Anne Malham, and by her side walked the husband whose success in life had made him a world-known figure. The large head, and hawk-like features had been so often represented in the Press that the public recognised him at a glance, but few of those who studied the weary face realised that this was a man who had not yet seen his forty-fifth year. There was no lingering trace of youth on the face of John Malham, millionaire! Behind the Malhams came yet another couple: the woman's left hand rested lightly on the banister, while on the inner side of the stairway, her husband slipped his arm through hers, as though to afford a double security to her descent. Slim, ethereally transparent, her white shoulders rising above a dress of misty black, a carmine flush staining the soft oval of her cheeks, Eve Dempster appeared more like a beautiful wraith than a woman of flesh and blood. The years had brought to her none of the ordinary signs of age; as though loath to mar so exquisite a creature, they had passed by, leaving behind nothing but an air of additional transparence and fragility to mark their course. Rupert, on the contrary, looked more than his age. His face was lined as by a ceaseless anxiety, but in his eyes there was a great content. Eve Dempster's long, misty train floated so far behind as to necessitate a gap in the descent of the guests. The gap, and the isolated position which she occupied as the first of the guests to descend in single file, threw into greater prominence the stolid, ungainly figure of Mrs Francis Manning, clad in a satin gown of a violent shade of blue. Her light hair was elaborately waved and dressed in the latest eccentricity of the day; tight white kid gloves came to an end half-way up her reddened arms. She looked what she was, a middle-class matron of the suburbs, divided between pride and embarrassment in her present position. Her husband followed close behind, large, heavily built, with clean-shaven face, patient, saddened, strikingly controlled. Mrs Ingram, watching from the hall beneath, felt a smarting of the eyes as she looked at that face, and remembered the torpid complacence of the days that were gone!