The hostess arose; a rustle and flurry of silk and lace and the sc.r.a.ping of chairs, a lingering word or laugh, and the colour vanished from the room leaving a circle of men in black standing around the table.

Here and there a man, lighting a cigarette, bolted his coffee and cognac and strolled out to the gun-room. Ferrall, gesticulating vigorously, resumed his preprandial dog story to Captain Voucher; Belwether b.u.t.tonholed Alderdene and bored him with an interminably facetious tale until that n.o.bleman, threatened with maxillary dislocation, fairly wrenched himself loose and came over to Siward, squinting furiously.

"Old a.s.s!" he muttered; "his chop whiskers look like the chops of a Southdown ram--and he's got the wits of one. Look here, Stephen, I hear you fell into no end of a sc.r.a.pe in town--"

"Tu quoque, Blinky? Oh, read the newspapers and let it go at that!"

"Just as you like old chap!" returned his lordship unabashed. "All I meant was--anything Voucher and I can do--of course--"

"You're very good. I'm not dead you know."

"'Not dead, you know'," repeated Major Belwether coming up behind them with his sprightly step; "that reminds me of a good one--" He sat down and lighted a cigar, then, vainly attempting to control his countenance as though roguishly antic.i.p.ating the treat awaiting them, he began another endless story.

Tradition had hallowed the popular notion that Major Belwether was a wit. The sycophant of the outer world seldom even awaited his first word before bursting into premature mirth. Besides he was very wealthy.

Siward watched him with mixed emotions; the lambent-eyed, sheepy expression had given place to the buck rabbit; his smooth baby-pink skin and downy white side whiskers quivered in premature sympathy with his listener's overwhelming hilarity.

The Page boys, very callow, very much delighted, and a little in awe of such a celebrated personage, laughed heartily. And altogether there was sufficient attention and sufficient laughter to make a very respectable noise. This, being the major's cue for an exit, he rose, one sleek hand raised in sprightly protest as though to shield the invisible ladies, to whose bournes he was bound, from an uproar too masculine and mighty for the ears of such a s.e.x.

"a.s.s!" muttered Alderdene, getting up and pattering about the room in his big, shiny pumps. "Give me a peg--somebody!"

Mortimer swallowed his brandy, lingered, lifted the decanter, mechanically considering its remaining contents and his own capacity; then:

"Bridge, Captain?"

"Certainly," said Captain Voucher briskly.

"I'll go and shoo the major into the gun-room," observed Ferrall--"unless--" looking questioningly at Siward.

"I've a date with your wife," observed that young man, strolling toward the hall.

The Page boys, Rena Bonnesdel, and Eileen Shannon were seated at a card table together, very much engaged with one another, the sealed pack lying neglected on the green cloth, a vast pink box of bon-bons beside it, not neglected.

O'Hara and Quarrier with Marion Page and Mrs. Mortimer were immersed in the game, already stony faced and oblivious to outer sounds.

About the rooms were distributed girls en tete-a-tete, girls eating bon-bons and watching the cards--among them Sylvia Landis, hands loosely clasped behind her, standing at Quarrier's elbow to observe and profit by an expert performance.

As Siward strolled in she raised her dainty head for an instant, smiled in silence, and resumed a study of her fiance's game.

A moment later, when Quarrier had emerged brilliantly from the melee, she looked up again, triumphantly, supposing Siward was lingering somewhere waiting to join her. And she was just a trifle surprised and disappointed to find him nowhere in sight. She had wished him to observe the brilliancy of Mr. Quarrier's game.

But Siward, outside on the veranda, was saying at that moment to his hostess: "I shall be very glad to read my mother's letter at any time you choose."

"It must be later, Stephen. I'm to cut in when Kemp sends for me. He has a lot of letters to attend to.

Tell me, what do you think of Sylvia Landis?"

"I like her, of course," he replied pleasantly.

Grace Ferrall stood thinking a moment: "That sketch you made proved a great success, didn't it?" And she laughed under her breath.

"Did it? I thought Mr. Quarrier seemed annoyed--"

"Really? What a m.u.f.f that cousin of mine is. He's such a m.u.f.f, you know, that the very sight of his pointed beard and pompadour hair and his complacency sets me in fidgets to stir him up."

"I don't think you'd best use me for the stick next time," said Siward.

"He's not my cousin you know."

Mrs. Ferrall shrugged her boyish shoulders: "By the way"--she said curiously--"who was that girl?"

"What girl," he asked coolly, looking at his hostess, now the very incarnation of delicate mockery with her pretty laughing mouth, her boyish sunburn and freckles.

"You won't tell me I suppose?"

"I'm sorry--"

"Was she pretty, Stephen?"

"Yes," he said sulkily; "I wish you wouldn't--"

"Nonsense! Do you think I'm going to let you off without some sort of confession? If I had time now--but I haven't. Kemp has business letters: he'll be furious; so I've got to take his cards or we won't have any pennies to buy gasoline for our adored and shrieking Mercedes."

She retreated backward with a gay nod of malice, turned to enter the house, and met Sylvia Landis face to face in the hallway.

"You minx!" she whispered; "aren't you ashamed?"

"Very much, dear. What for?" And catching sight of Siward outside in the starlight, divined perhaps something of her hostess' meaning, for she laughed uneasily, like a child who winces under a stern eye.

"You don't suppose for a moment," she began, "that I have--"

"Yes I do. You always do."

"Not with that sort of man," she returned navely; "he won't."

Mrs. Ferrall regarded her suspiciously: "You always pick out exactly the wrong man to play with--"

They had moved back side by side into the hall, the hostess' arm linked in the arm of the younger girl.

"The wrong man?" repeated Sylvia, instinctively freeing her arm, her straight brows beginning to bend inward.

"I didn't mean that--exactly. You know how much I care for his mother--and for him." The obstinate downward trend of the brows, the narrowing blue gaze signalled mutiny to the woman who knew her so well.

"What is so wrong with Mr. Siward?" she asked.

"Nothing. There was an affair--"

"This spring in town. I know it. Is that all?"

"Yes--for the present," replied Grace Ferrall uncomfortably; then: "For goodness' sake, Sylvia, don't cross examine me that way! I care a great deal for that boy--"