"Woodroffe?" Alice asked. "It was my first husband's name."
"Very possibly he, too, was a cousin. The other is a young fellow called Richard Woodroffe."
"Again the name," said Alice.
"Yes; the distant cousin. He is a musician and a dramatist in a small and clever way."
"Dick is my oldest friend," said Molly.
"I am very glad, then, that he is coming to-night."
Sir Robert considered this young lady more attentively, because a girl who was Dick Woodroffe's oldest friend must be a young lady out of the common. There was, he observed, something certainly uncommon in her appearance, something which might suggest the footlights. Any old friend of Dick Woodroffe must suggest the footlights.
"It is strange," said the doctor, "to have three of our small party belonging to the same name."
The other guests arrived. The last was Humphrey. He looked round the room with that expression of cold and insolent curiosity which made him so much beloved by everybody. "Outsiders all," that look expressed. He greeted Dick with a brief nod of astonished recognition, as if he had not expected to meet him in a drawing-room. He stared at Mrs. Haveril's diamonds, and he smiled with some astonishment, but yet graciously, on Molly.
"You are properly dressed to-night," he whispered. "I have never seen you looking so well."