which the family would produce for the occasion.  As a matter of fact, there was a perceptible hush in the hum of talk as she made her entry into the drawing-room, ostensibly led by Philip Wayne, but really leading him.  As she paused near the door, half timid, half bewildered, looking for her hostess, it did not help her to feel at ease to see Mrs. Endsleigh Jarrott—­a Rubens Maria de Medici in white satin and pearls—­raise her lorgnette and call on a tall young man who stood beside her to take a look.  There was no time to distinguish anything further before Miss Jarrott glided up, with mincing graciousness, to shake hands.

“How do you do!  How do you do!  So glad you’ve come.  I think you must know nearly every one here, so I needn’t introduce any one.  I hardly ever introduce.  It’s funny, isn’t it?  They say it’s an English custom not to introduce, but I don’t do it just by nature.  I wonder why I shouldn’t?—­but I never do—­or almost never.  So if you don’t happen to know your neighbors at table just speak.  It was Evie who arranged where every one was to sit. I don’t know.  They say that’s English, too—­just to speak.  I believe it’s quite a recognized thing in London to say, ’Is this your bread or mine?’ and then you know each other.  Isn’t it funny?  Now I think we’re all here.  Will you take in Miriam, Mr. Wayne?”

A hasty embrace from Evie—­an angelic vision in white—­was followed by a few words of greeting from Charles Conquest after which Miriam saw Miss Jarrott take the arm of Bishop Endsleigh, and the procession began to move.

At table Miriam was glad of the dim, rose-colored light.  It offered her a seclusion into which she could withdraw, tending her services to Wayne.  She was glad, too, that the family, having so much to say to itself, paid her no special attention.  She was sufficiently occupied in aiding the helpless blind man beside her, and repeating for his benefit the names of their fellow-guests.  As the large party talked at the top of its lungs, Miriam’s quiet voice, with its liquid, almost contralto, quality, reached her companion’s ears unheard by others.  She began with Bishop Endsleigh who was on Miss Jarrott’s right.  Then came Mrs. Stephen Colfax; after her Mr. Endsleigh Jarrott, who had on his right Mrs. Reginald Pole.  Mrs. Pole’s neighbor was Charles Conquest, whom she shared with Mrs. Rodney Wrenn.  Now and then Wayne himself would give proof of that increased acuteness in his hearing of which he had spoken more than once since his blindness had become total.  “Colfax Yorke is here,” he observed at one time.  “I hear his voice.  He’s sitting on our side of the table.”  “Mrs. Endsleigh Jarrott is next but one to you,” he said at another time.  “She’s airing her plans for the reconstruction of New York society.”

So for a while they kept one another in small talk, affecting the same sort of vivacity that obtained around them.  It was not till dinner was half over that he asked in an undertone: