Mr. Paradine stood six-foot-five in his shoes. He carried his height with ease and dignity. His fine head was thickly covered with silver hair, but his eyebrows and the eyes over which they arched were as dark as they had been when he was twenty. The ruby and gold of the room became merely background when he came in. A little behind him on his left was his secretary, Albert Pearson, a bun-faced young man in hornrimmed spectacles and the kind of dress suit which suggests a peg in a bargain basement. On his other side Elliot Wray.

Everyone stopped talking. Everyone looked at Elliot. Mr. Paradine came up to his sister and observed with smiling malice,

“My dear, you will be charmed to know that we have another guest. You were complaining only this morning that ten would not make at all a good table. Well, here is Elliot Wray to make the number up to eleven. We had some business together, and I have prevailed upon him to stay.”

Chapter 3

Elliot Wray, coming into the room, looked down the length of it to the group of black and white figures about the glowing hearth. They were small and far away-black figures and white figures of the women, black-and-white figures of the men, with the dazzle of firelight behind them and a brightness of gilding and shimmering glass overhead. The three black figures were Grace Paradine and Irene and Brenda Ambrose, the two white ones were Lydia Pennington and Phyllida. His mind named them in this order because he held it to the task. He held his eyes to each in turn before he let them rest on Phyllida. She was pale, she had grown thinner. She wore a white dress and Grace Paradine’s pearls. She stood between Mark and Irene, and she was looking up at Mark. Elliot had come more than half way up the room behind James Paradine before she turned and saw him.

It was something in Mark’s face that made her turn. Those gloomy, brooding eyes of his had waked up, become startled, interested.



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