CHAPTER XVII.
The last week of September found Charles back at Stoke Moreton to receive the "friends" of whom Mrs.Alwynn spoke.

People whose partridges he had helped to kill were now to be gathered from the east and from the west to help to kill his.

From the north also guests were coming, were leaving their mountains to--But the remainder of the line is invidious.
The Hope-Actons had written to offer a visit at Stoke Moreton on the strength of an old promise to Charles, a promise so old that he had forgotten it, until reminded, that next time they were passing they would take his house on their way.

They had offered their visit exactly at the same time for which he had just invited the Alwynns and Ruth.
Charles felt that they were not quite the people whom he would have arranged to meet each other, but, as Fate had so decreed it, he acquiesced calmly enough.
But when Lady Mary also wrote tenderly from Scarborough, to ask if she could be of any use helping to entertain his guests, he felt it imperative to draw the line, and wrote a grateful effusion to his aunt, saying that he could not think of asking her to leave a place where he felt sure she was deriving spiritual and temporal benefit, in order to assist at so unprofitable a festivity as a shooting-party.

He mentioned casually that Lady Grace Lawrence, Miss Deyncourt, and Miss Wyndham were to be of the party, which details he imagined might have an interest for her amid her graver reflections.
The subject of Ruth's coming certainly had a prominent place in his own graver reflections.