Already the guests were very numerous, and they continued to arrive.  The drawing-rooms filled; a crowd of men smoked in the ‘library’ and the billiard-room; women swarmed in passages and staircase.  After welcoming Mrs. Rolfe with the ardour of a bosom friend and the prostration of a devotee, the hostess turned to the next comer with scarcely less fervency.  And Alma passed on, content for the present to be lost amid thronging strangers.

‘Who are all these people?’ she asked of Sibyl, who had moved along by her side.

’Nobodies, most of them, I should imagine.  There’s no need to stay very long, you know.  That’s Mr. Strangeways, the little man with a red face talking to that mountain of a woman in green.  Mercy, what a dress!  He’s coming this way; I’ll introduce him to you.’

The host had a jovial carriage and a bluff way of speaking, both obviously affected.  His eyes wandered as he talked, and never met anyone else’s with a steady look.  Alma thought him offensively familiar, but he did not inflict himself upon her for long.

When the hostess began to go hither and thither, she pounced eagerly on Mrs. Rolfe, and soon made her the centre of a group.  Alma began to taste the old delight of homage, though she perceived that her new acquaintances were not of the world in which she had formerly shone.  About midnight, when she was a little tired of the crush, and thought of going, there fell upon her ear a voice which startled and aroused her like an unexpected grasp.  On the instant she saw an open place in Munich; the next, a lake and mountains.

’I wasn’t in town then.  I got out of sorts, and ran away to a little place I have on the Lake of Garda.’

The speaker was immediately behind her.  She all but turned her head, and grew hot in the effort to command herself.  Amid the emotions naturally excited in her she was impressed by a quality in the voice, a refinement of utterance, which at once distinguished it from that of the men with whom she had been talking.  It belonged to a higher social grade, if it did not express a superiority of nature.  For some moments she listened, catching now and then a word; then other voices intervened.  At length, turning where she stood, she let her eyes range, expressionless, over the faces near by.  That which she sought was not discoverable, but at the same moment the hostess came up to her.

Mrs. Rolfe, do you know Mr. Cyrus Redgrave?’

‘Mr. Redgrave ——?’

The confused, hesitating repetition of the name was taken by Mrs Strangeways for a reply in the negative.

’A charming man, and a great friend of mine —­ oh, a very old friend.  Let me bring him.’

She rustled away, and Mrs. Rolfe sank back on to the causeuse from which she had newly risen.  Quickly the hostess returned, and, in the track she made through crowded clusters of people who stood talking, there followed a gentleman of easy carriage, with handsome features and thin hair.  He was looking for Alma, and as soon as his eyes perceived her, they fell.  Of what Mrs. Strangeways said, Alma heard not a syllable; she bowed mechanically, clutching her fan as though in peril of a fall and this the only thing within reach; she knew that Redgrave bent solemnly, silently; and then, with sudden relief, she saw the hostess retire.