“Right!” said Howard, rising.  “There’s the bell!”

As Howard had said, there was an air of suppressed excitement about the people; and it was not confined to the financiers who clustered together in the hall and discussed and talked in undertones, every now and then glancing up the stairs down which Sir Stephen would presently descend.  Most of the other guests, though they had no direct and personal interest in the great scheme, more or less had heard rumours and come within reflective radius of the excitement; as for the rest, who knew nothing or cared less for Sir Stephen’s railway, they were in a pleasant condition of excitement over the coming dance.

Stafford, as he stood in the hall talking about the night’s programme to Bertie—­who had been elected, by common and tacit consent, master of the ceremonies—­saw Maude Falconer descending the stairs.  She was even more exquisitely dressed than usual; and Stafford heard some of the women and men murmur admiringly and enviously as she swept across the hall in her magnificent ball-dress; her diamonds, for which she was famous, glittering in her hair, on her white throat, and on her slender wrists.  The dress was a mixture of grey and black, which would have looked bizarre on anyone else less beautiful; but its strange tints harmonised with her superb and classic class of beauty, and she looked like a vision of loveliness which might well dazzle the eyes of the beholders.

She paused in her progress—­it might almost be called a triumphant one, for the other women’s looks were eloquent of dismay—­and looked at Stafford with the slow, half-dreamy smile which had come into her face of late when she spoke to him.

“Have you seen my father?  Has he come down, Mr. Orme?” she asked.

“No,” said Stafford.  He looked at her, as a man does when he admires a woman’s dress, and forgetting Howard’s words of warning, said:  “What a splendacious frock, Miss Falconer!”

“Do you like it?  I am glad,” she said.  “I had my doubts, but now—­”

Her eyes rested on his for a moment, then she passed on.

“I shouldn’t like to have to pay Miss Falconer’s dress bill,” remarked a young married woman, looking after her.  “That ‘frock’ as you call it, in your masculine ignorance, must have cost a small fortune.”

Stafford laughed.

“We men always put our foot in it when we talk about a woman’s dress,” he said.

A moment after, the dinner was announced, and Sir Stephen, who had come down at the last moment, as he went up to take in Lady Clansford, nodded to Stafford, and smiled significantly.  He was as carefully dressed as usual, but on his face, and in his eyes particularly, was an expression of satisfaction and anticipatory triumph which was too obvious to escape the notice of but very few.  He was not “loud” at dinner, but talked even more fluently than usual, and once or twice his fine eyes swept the long table with a victorious, masterful glance.