e went down the stairs she heard the click of cues from the
billiard-room, the talk and laughter of belated bridge-players, the
movement of servants gathering up tea-cups and mending fires. She had
hoped to find the hall empty, but the sight of Westy Gaines's figure
looming watchfully on the threshold of the smoking-room gave her, at the
last bend of the stairs, a little start of annoyance. He would want to
know where she was going, he would offer to go with her, and it would
take some time and not a little emphasis to make him understand that his
society was not desired.

This was the thought that flashed through Justine's mind as she reached
the landing; but the next moment it gave way to a contradictory feeling.
Westy Gaines was not alone in the hall. From under the stairway rose the
voices of a group ensconced in that popular retreat about a chess-board;
and as Justine reached the last turn of the stairs she perceived that
Mason Winch, an earnest youth with advanced views on political economy,
was engaged, to the diversion of a circle of spectators, in teaching the
Telfer girls chess. The futility of trying to fix the spasmodic
attention of this effervescent couple, and their instructor's grave
unconsciousness of the fact, constituted, for the lookers-on, the
peculiar diversion of the scene. It was of course inevitable that young
Winch, on his arrival at Lynbrook, should have succumbed at once to the
tumultuous charms of the Telfer manner, which was equally attractive to
inarticulate youth and to tired and talked-out middle-age; but that he
should have perceived no resistance in their minds to the deliberative
processes of the game of chess, was, even to the Telfers themselves, a
source of unmitigated gaiety. Nothing seemed to them funnier than that
any one should credit them with any mental capacity; and they had
inexhaustibly amusing ways of drawing out and showing off each other's
ignorance.

It was on this scene that Westy's appreciative eyes had been fixed till
Justine's appearance drew them to herself. He pronounced her name
joyfully, and moved forward to greet her; but as their hands met she
understood that he did not mean to press his company upon her. Under the
eye of the Lynbrook circle he was chary of marked demonstrations, and
even Mrs. Amherst's approval could not, at such moments, bridge over the
gap between himself and the object of his attentions. A Gaines was a
Gaines in the last analysis, and apar