with
suppressed laughter. The merry find no more difficulty in keeping a
straight face than he found in using the flat phrase. And as she
gleefully gazed at him, recognising in him her sort of person, his
speech slipped the business leash. There were hedges of geranium and
poinsettia about the villa, pergolas hung with bougainvillea, numberless
palms, and a very pleasant orange grove in good bearing; in the
courtyard a bronze Venus rode on a sprouting whale, and there were many
fountains; and within there was much white marble and pillars of
precious stone, and horrible liverish Viennese mosaics, for the house
was something of a prodigy, having been built in a trade boom by a
_rastaqouere_. "Mhm," said Mr. Philip sagaciously, and from the funeral
slide of respect in his voice Ellen guessed that he imagined
_rastaqouere_ to be a Brazilian variety of Lord Provost. She would have
laughed had there not been the plainest intimation that he was still
upset about something in his question whether Yaverland thought he
would be well advised to sell the house, whether he had any reasonable
expectation of recovering the capital he had sunk in it; for she had
noticed that whenever Mr. Philip felt miserable he was wont to try and
cheer himself by suggesting that somebody had been "done."

But that worry was dissolved by the enchantment of Yaverland's answer.
He hadn't the slightest idea what he had paid for the villa. It happened
this way. He had won a lot of money at poker ("Tchk! Tchk!" said Mr.
Philip, half shocked, but showing by the way he put one thumb in his
waistcoat arm-hole that he was so far sensible of the change in the
atmosphere that he felt the need of some romantic gesture), and had felt
no shame in pocketing it since it came from a man who was gambling to
try to show that he wasn't a Jew. Ellen hated him for that. She believed
in absolute racial equality, and sometimes intended to marry a Hindu as
a propagandist measure. And then he had remembered that a friend of his,
de Cayagun of the Villa Miraflores, was broke and wanted to move. Even
Rio was tired of poor de Cayagun, though he'd given it plenty of fun.
There had been great times at the villa. His phrases, which seemed to
have scent and colour as well as meaning, made her see red pools of wine
on the marble floor and rose wreaths about the bronze whale's snout, and
hear from the orange grove the sound of harps, yet from a sullenness in
his faint smile she deduce