At this moment there was a general movement. The butler had murmured to
Mrs. Ackroyde that lunch was ready.

Lady Sellingworth was among the first few women who left the
drawing-room, and was sitting at a round table in the big,
stone-coloured dining-room when Baron de Melville, an habitue at Coombe,
bent over her.

"I'm lucky enough to be beside you!" he said. "This is a rare occasion.
One never meets you now."

He sat down on her right. The place on her left was vacant. People were
still coming in, talking, laughing, finding their seats. The Duchess of
Wellingborough, who was exactly opposite to Lady Sellingworth, leaned
forward to speak to her.

"Adela . . . Adela!"

"Yes? How are you, Cora?"

"Very well, as I always am. Isn't Lavallois a marvel?"

"He is certainly very clever."

"You are proud of it, my dear. Have you heard what the Bolshevist envoy
said to the Prime Minister when--"

But at this moment someone spoke to the duchess, who was already
beginning to laugh at the story she was intending to tell and Lady
Sellingworth was aware of a movement on her left. She felt as if she
blushed, though no colour came into her face.

"How are you, Lady Sellingworth?"

She had not turned her head, but now she did, and met Craven's hard,
uncompromising blue eyes and deliberately smiling lips.

"Oh, it's you! How nice!"

She gave him her hand. He just touched it coldly. What a boy he still
was in his polite hostility! She thought of Camber Sands and the
darkness falling over the waste, and, in spite of her self-control and
her pity for him, there was an unconquerable feeling of injury in her
heart. What reason, what right, had he to greet her so frigidly? How had
she injured him?

A roar of conversation had begun in the room. Everyone seemed in high
spirits. Mrs. Ackroyde, who was at the same table as Lady Sellingworth,
with Lord Alfred Craydon on her right and Sir Robert Syng on her
left, looked steadily round over the multitude of her guests with a
comprehensive glance, the analyzing and summing-up glance of one to whom
everything social was as an open book containing no secrets which her
eyes did not read. Those eyes travelled calmly, and presently came to
Craven and Adela Sellingworth. She smiled faintly and spoke to Robert
Syng.

"This is her second debut," she said. "I'm bringing her out again. They
are all amazed."

"What about?" said Sir Robert, in his grim and very masculine voice.

"Bobb