They crossed the hall and came into the drawing-room, where two young men stood warming themselves before the fire. Both were Paradines, nephews of old James Paradine. They were cousins, not brothers, and they bore no resemblance either to one another or to their uncle. Mark, the elder, was thirty-five-a tall, dark man with strong features and an air of gloom. Dicky several years younger-slight, fair, with ingenuous blue eyes and an unfailing flow of good spirits.

Whilst Mark was shaking hands and greeting his aunt and Phyllida with the fewest possible words, Dicky was kissing them both and rattling off compliments, good wishes, and enquiries.

“You’re a smash hit in that dress, Aunt Grace- isn’t she, Mark? I say-you’ve got ’em all on too, haven’t you? The old diamond star well to the fore! Do you remember when you tied it on to the top of the Christmas tree and Phyl nearly cried herself into a fit because she wanted it for keeps?”

“I didn’t!”

“Oh, yes, you did. You were only three, so we won’t hold it up against you. You were awfully pretty then-wasn’t she, Aunt Grace-pretty enough to stick on the Christmas tree with the star?”

Grace Paradine stood there smiling with Dicky’s arm at her waist. Praise of Phyllida was the incense of which she could never have enough.

Dicky burst out laughing.

“Pity she’s gone off so-isn’t it, darling?”

And then the door opened and Lane announced Mr. and Mrs. Ambrose, Miss Ambrose, and Miss Pennington. They all came in together-Frank Ambrose big and fair, with a pale, heavy face; his pretty dark wife Irene, with her air of having dressed in a hurry; his sister Brenda, mannish, with thick cropped hair as fair as his and the same very light blue eyes. One of the very worst quarrels which periodically shook the Ambrose household had followed upon a suggestion by Irene and her sister Lydia Pennington that Brenda’s appearance would be very much improved if she would darken her almost white eyelashes. Lydia had most obligingly proffered experienced help, but the whole affair had gone up in smoke.