The countess, in her own quiet way, shook hands with him as though she had seen him only the day before.

The earl, who was seated in his arm-chair, asked some one, out loud, who the stranger was, and then, with two fingers put forth, muttered some apology for a welcome.

But Crosbie was quite up to that kind of thing.

"How do, my lord ?" he said, turning his face away to some one else as he spoke; and then he took no further notice of the master of the house.

"Not know him, indeed!" Crippled though he was by his matrimonial bond, Crosbie felt that, at any rate as yet, he was the earl's equal in social importance.