oments her descent upon her guests appeared
positively winged like the descent of cherubim. To-night she advanced
slowly from her hearth-rug with no more than the very slightest swaying
and rolling of all her softness, the very faintest tremor of her downy
wings. Mrs. Hannay's face was the round face of innocence, the face of
a cherub with blown cheeks and lips shaped for the trumpet.

"My dear Mrs. Majendie--at last." She retained Mrs. Majendie's hand for
the moment of presenting her to her husband. By this gesture she
appropriated Mrs. Majendie, taking her under her small cherubic wing.
"Wallie, how d'you do?" Her left hand furtively appropriated Mrs.
Majendie's husband. Anne marked the familiarity with dismay. It was
evident that at the Hannays' Walter was in the warm lap of intimacy.

It was evident, too, that Mr. Hannay had married considerably beneath
him. Anne owned that he had a certain dignity, and that there was
something rather pleasing in his loose, clean-shaven face. The sharp
slenderness of youth was now vanishing in a rosy corpulence, corpulence
to which Mr. Hannay resigned himself without a struggle. But above it the
delicate arch of his nose attested the original refinement of his type.
His mouth was not without sweetness, Mr. Hannay being as indulgent to
other people as he was to himself.

He received Anne with a benign air; he assured her of his delight in
making her acquaintance; and he refrained from any allusions to the long
delay of his delight.

Little Mrs. Hannay was rolling softly in another direction.

"Canon Wharton, let me present you to Mrs. Walter Majendie."

She had risen to Canon Wharton. For she had said to her husband: "You
must get the Canon. She can't think us such a shocking bad lot if we have
him." Her face expressed triumph in the capture of Canon Wharton, triumph
in the capture of Mrs. Walter Majendie, triumph in the introduction.
Owing to the Hannays' determination to rise to it, the dinner-party, in
being rigidly select, was of necessity extremely small.

"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 en