ely, and answered decorously:

"Everything is quite right, ma'am."

Miss Heredith walked slowly round the spacious table, adjusting a knife
here, a fork there, and giving an added touch to the table decorations.
There was not the slightest necessity for her to do so, because the
appointments were as perfect as they could be made by the hands of old
servants who knew their mistress and her ways thoroughly. But it was
Miss Heredith's nightly custom, and Tufnell, standing by the carved
buffet, watched her with an indulgent smile, as he had done every
evening during the last ten years.

While Miss Heredith was thus engaged, the door opened and Sir Philip
Heredith entered the room in company with an old family friend, Vincent
Musard.

CHAPTER III

Sir Philip Heredith was a dignified figure of an English country
gentleman of the old type. He was tall and thin, aristocratic of mien,
with white hair and faded blue eyes. His face was not impressive. At
first sight it seemed merely that of a tired old man, weary of the
paltry exactions of life, and longing for rest; but, at odd moments, one
caught a passing resemblance to a caged eagle in a swift turn of the
falcon profile, or in a sudden flash of the old eyes beneath the
straight Heredith brows. At such times the Heredith face--the warrior
face of a long line of fierce fighters and freebooting ancestors--leaped
alive in the ageing features of the last but one of the race.

His companion was a man of about fifty-five. His face was brown, as
though from hot suns, his close-cropped hair was silver-grey, and he had
the bold, clear-cut features of a man quick to make up his mind and
accustomed to command. His eyes were the strangest feature of his
dominating personality. They were small and black, and appeared almost
lidless, with something in their dark direct gaze like the unwinking
glare of a snake. His apparel was unconventional, even for war-time,
consisting of a worn brown suit with big pockets in the jacket, and a
soft collar, with a carelessly arranged tie. On the little finger of his
left hand he wore a ruby ring of noticeable size and lustre.

Vincent Musard was a remarkable personality. He came of a good county
family, which had settled in Sussex about the same time that the first
Philip Heredith had burnt down the moat-house, but his family tree
extended considerably beyond that period. If the name of Here-Deith was
inscribed in the various versions of the