Only Theodora and Josiah were completely out of it all, and several of the guests, who resented the intrusion of these strangers into their charmed circle, would take care on every opportunity to make them feel it.

Hector did not get there until half an hour later, in his automobile, which was the mode of arrival with more than two-thirds of the company.

And until the dressing-gong sounded, a continuous teuf-teuf-teuf might have been heard as, one after another, the cars whizzed up to the door.

Of course, in a troop of over thirty people, naturally some had kind hearts and good manners, but the prevailing tone of this coterie of creme de la creme was one of pure selfishness and blunt and material brutality.

If you were rich and suited them, you were given a nickname probably, and were allowed to play cards with them, and lose your money for their benefit.  If you were non-congenial you did not exist—­that was all.  You might be sitting in a chair, but they only saw it and an empty space—­you did not even cumber their ground.

To do them justice, they preferred people of their own exalted station; outsiders seldom made their way into this holy of holies, however rich they were—­unless, of course, they happened to be Mildred’s lovers.  That situation for a man held special prerogatives, and was greatly coveted by pretenders to this circle of grace.

Intellectual intelligence was not important.  Some of the women of this select company had been described by an agricultural duke who had stayed there as having just enough sense to come in out of the rain.

Sir Patrick Fitzgerald occasionally departed from the strict limits of this set in the big parties—­especially lately, when money was becoming scarcer, several financial friends who could put him on to good things had been included, the result being that Lady Harrowfield had not always shed the light of her countenance upon the festivities.

Lord Harrowfield drew most of his income from a great, populous manufacturing city in the north, so neither he nor his countess had need to smile at mere wealth.

And Lady Harrowfield had said, frankly, “Let me know if it is a utility party, Patrick, or for just ourselves, because if you are going to have these creatures I sha’n’t come.”

This time, however, she had not been so exigent.  It happened to suit some other arrangements of hers to spend Whitsuntide at Beechleigh, so she consented to chaperon Morella Winmarleigh without asking for a list of the guests.

Hector had never conformed to any special set; he went here, there, and everywhere, and was welcomed by all.  But somehow, until this occasion, Beechleigh had never seen him within its gates, although Lady Harrowfield had praised him, and Mildred had sighed for him in vain.

He saw the situation at a glance when he came into the saloon:  Josiah and Theodora sitting together, neglected by every one but Barbara.  They could not have been more than half an hour in the house, he knew, for he had found out when the trains got in.