“I’m afraid we are short of one chair. We expected to be only seven. Henry dear, you will have to get one from the dining-room. I’m so sorry to bother you.”

“I’ll share Dinah’s chair,” said Henry happily.

“Please don’t get one for me,” said Mrs. Ross. “Billy can perch on my arm.”

She settled herself composedly in a chair on the rector’s left and Dr. Templett at once sat on the arm. Miss Prentice had already made sure of her place on the rector’s right hand and Miss Campanula, defeated, uttered a short laugh and marched to the far end of the table.

“I don’t know whether this is where I am bidden, Eleanor,” she said, “but the meeting seems to be delightfully informal, so this is where I shall sit. Ha!”

Henry, his father, and Dinah took the remaining chairs.

From the old chandelier a strong light was cast down on the eight faces round the table; on the squire, pink with embarrassment; on Miss Prentice, smiling; on Miss Campanula, like an angry mare, breathing hard through her nostrils; on Henry’s dark Jernigham features; on Dinah’s crisp and vivid beauty; on the rector’s coin-sharp priestliness and on Dr. Templett’s hearty undistinguished normality. It shone on Selia Ross. She was a straw-coloured woman of perhaps thirty-eight. She was not beautiful but she was exquisitely neat. Her hair curved back from her forehead in pale waves. The thick white skin of her face was beautifully made-up and her clothes were admirable. There was a kind of sharpness about her so that she nearly looked haggard. Her eyes were pale and you would have guessed that the lashes were white when left to themselves. Almost every human being bears some sort of resemblance to an animal and Mrs. Ross was a little like a ferret. But for all that she had a quality that arrested the attention of many women and most men. She had a trick of widening her eyes, and looking slantways.