new. Mrs. Ackroyde
gave her blunt, but kindly, greeting, with her strange eyes, fierce and
remote, yet notably honest, taking in at a glance the results of Geneva.
Lady Wrackley was there in an astonishing black hat trimmed with bird
of paradise plumes. Glancing about her while she still spoke to Dindie
Ackroyde carelessly, Lady Sellingworth saw young Leving; Sir Robert
Syng; the Duchess of Wellingborough, shaking her broad shoulders and
tossing up her big chin as she laughed at some joke; Jennie Farringdon,
with her puffy pale cheeks and parrot-like nose, talking to old Hubert
Mostine, the man of innumerable weddings, funerals and charity fetes,
with his blinking eyelids and moustaches that drooped over a large and
gossiping mouth; Magdalen Dearing, whose Mona Lisa smile had attracted
three generations of men, and who had managed to look sad and be riotous
for at least four decades; Frances Braybrooke, pulling at his beard;
Mrs. Birchington; Lady Anne Smith, wiry, cock-nosed, brown, ugly, but
supremely smart and self-assured; Eve Colton, painted like a wall, and
leaning, with an old hand blazing with jewels, on a stick with a jade
handle; Mrs. Dews, the witty actress, with her white, mobile face, and
the large irresponsible eyes which laughed at herself, the critics and
the world; Lord Alfred Craydon, thin, high church and political, who
loved pretty women but receded farther and farther from marriage as
the years spun by; and Lady Twickenham, a French _poupee_; and Julian
Lamberhurst, the composer, who looked as if he had grown up to his six
foot four in one night, like the mustard seed; and Hilary Lane, the
friend of poets; and--how many more! For Dindie Ackroyde loved to gather
a crowd for lunch, and had a sort of physical love of noise and human
complications.

At the far end of the room there was a section which was raised a few
inches above the rest. Here stood two Steinway grand pianos, tail to
tail, their dark polished cases shining soberly in the pale light of
November. There were some deep settees on this species of dais, and,
looking towards it, over the heads of the crowd in the lower part of the
room, Lady Sellingworth saw Craven again.

He was sitting beside a pretty girl, whom Lady Sellingworth did not
know, and talking. His face looked hard and bored, but he was leaning
towards the girl as if trying to seem engrossed, intent, on the
conversation and on her.

Francis Braybrooke came up. Lady Sellingwo