“Miss Mildred Wharton—­Sir Rigley Barker—­Mr. Gorst.  Now you all know each other.”

The last person introduced had lingered with a certain charming diffidence at Mrs. Majendie’s side.  He was a man of about her husband’s age, or a little younger, fair and slender, with a restless, flushed face and brilliant eyes.

“I can’t tell you what a pleasure this is, Mrs. Majendie.”

He had an engaging voice and a still more engaging smile.

“You may have heard about me from your husband.  I was awfully sorry to miss you when I called before I went to Norway.  I only came back this morning, but I made Hannay invite me.”

Anne murmured some suitable politeness.  She said afterwards that her instinct had warned her against Mr. Gorst, with his restlessness and brilliance; but, as a matter of fact, her instinct had done nothing of the sort, and his manners had prejudiced her in his favour.  Fanny Eliott had told her that he belonged to a very old Lincolnshire family.  There was a distinction about him.  And he really had a particularly engaging smile.

So she received him amiably; so amiably that Majendie, who had been observing their encounter with an intent and rather anxious interest, appeared finally reassured.  He joined them, releasing himself adroitly from Sir Rigley Barker.

“How’s Edith?” said Mr. Gorst.

His use of the name and something in his intonation made Anne attentive.

“She’s better,” said Majendie.  “Come and see her soon.”

“Oh, rather.  I’ll come round to-morrow.  If,” he added, “Mrs. Majendie will permit me.”

“Mrs. Majendie,” said her husband, “will be delighted.”

Anne smiled assent.  Her amiability extended even to Mrs. Hannay, who had risen to it, so far, well.

During dinner Anne gave her attention to her right-hand neighbour, Canon Wharton; and Mrs. Hannay, looking down from her end of the table, saw her selection justified.  In rising to the Canon she had risen her highest; for the ex-member hardly counted; he was a fallen star.  But Canon Wharton, the Vicar of All Souls, stood on an eminence, social and spiritual, in Scale.  He had built himself a church in the new quarter of the town, and had filled it to overflowing by the power of his eloquence.  Lawson Hannay, in a moment of unkind insight, had described the Canon as “a speculative builder”; but he lent him money for his building, and liked him none the less.

Out of the pulpit the Vicar of All Souls was all things to all men.  In the pulpit he was nothing but the Vicar of All Souls.  He stood there for a great light in Scale, “holding,” as he said, “the light, carrying the light, battling for light in the darkness of that capital of commerce, that stronghold of materialism, founded on money, built up in money, cemented with money!” He snarled out the word “money,” and flung it in the face of his fashionable congregation; he gnashed