hand"; the latter,--"Oh, of course, ask him to come up, Maggie! Don't
let him go away on any account." But neither of these ladies expressed
any surprise at the rather prompt recrudescence of Mr. Pellew, last seen
at the Towers two days since.

The only flaw in a pretext that Mr. Pellew had come to leave Tennyson's
"Princess," with his card in it, and run away as if the book-owner would
bite him, was perhaps the ostentation with which that lady left his
detention to her hostess. It would have been at once more candid and
more skilful to say, "Oh yes, it's my book. But I didn't want Mr. Pellew
to bother about bringing it back," with a judicious infusion of
enthusiasm that the visitor's efforts to get away should fail. However,
the flaw was slight, and no one cared about the transparency of the
pretext. Moreover, Maggie, a new importation from the Highlands, thought
that her young ladyship, whose beauty had overwhelmed her, was at the
bottom of it--not Aunt Constance.

"Now you _are_ here, Percy, you had better make yourself useful. Sit as
we are. I'm not sorry you're come, because I hate playing dummy." This
was Gwen, naturally.

The impersonality of Dummy furnished a topic to tide over the
assimilation of things, and help the social _fengshui_ to plausibility.
There was a fillah--said Mr. Pellew--at the Club, who wouldn't take
Dummy unless that fiction was accommodated with a real chair. And there
was another fillah who couldn't play unless the vacant chair was taken
away. Something had happened to this fillah when he was a boy, and
anything like a ghost was uncongenial to him. You shouldn't lock up
children in the dark or make grimaces at them if you wanted them not to
be nervous in after-life ... and so forth.

Gwen was a bad whist-player, sometimes taking a very perverted view of
the game. As, for instance, when, after Mr. Pellew had dealt, she asked
her partner how many trumps she held. "Because, Clo," said she, "I've
only got two, and unless you've got at least four, I don't see the use
of going on." Public opinion condemned this attitude as unsportsmanlike,
and demanded another deal. Gwen welcomed the suggestion, having only a
Knave and a Queen in all the rest of her hand.

Her partner expressed disgust. "I think," she said, "you might have held
your tongue, Gwen, and played it out. But I shan't tell you why."

"Oh, I know, of course, without your telling me. You're made of trumps.
I'm so sorry, dear! There