, suddenly dark against the door of the lighted
billiard-room, then brilliantly illuminated, as he entered, nodded
acceptance to Mortimer's invitation, and picked up the cue just laid
aside by Agatha Caithness, who had turned to speak to Marion. Then
Mortimer's bulk loomed nearer; voices became gay and animated in the
billiard-room. Siward's handsome face was bent toward Agatha Caithness
in gay challenge; Mortimer's heavy laugh broke out; there came the
rattle of pool-balls, and the dull sound of cue-butts striking the
floor; then, crack! and the game began, with Marion Page and Siward
fighting Mortimer and Miss Caithness for something or other.

Quarrier had been speaking for some time before Sylvia became aware
of it--something about a brisk walk in the morning somewhere; and she
nodded impatiently, watching Marion's supple waist-line as she bent far
over the illuminated table for a complicated shot at the enemy.

His fiancee's inattention was not agreeable to Quarrier. A dozen things
had happened since his arrival which had not been agreeable to him:
her failure to meet him at the Fells Crossing, and the reason for her
failure; and her informal acquaintance with Siward, whose presence at
Shotover he had not looked for, and her sudden intimacy with the man he
had never particularly liked, and whom within six months he had come to
detest and to avoid.

These things--the outrageous liberty Siward had permitted himself in
caricaturing him, the mortifying caprice of Sylvia for Siward on the day
of the Shotover cup-drive--had left indelible impressions in a cold and
rather heavy mind, slow to waste effort in the indulgence of any vital
emotion.

In a few years indifference to Siward had changed to passive
disapproval; that, again, to an emotionless dislike; and when the
scandal at the Patroons Club occurred, for the first time in his life
he understood what it was to fear the man he disliked. For if Siward
had committed the insane imprudence which had cost him his title to
membership, he had also done something, knowingly or otherwise, which
awoke in Quarrier a cold, slow fear; and that fear was dormant, but
present, now, and it, for the time being, dictated his attitude and
bearing toward the man who might or might not be capable of using
viciously a knowledge which Quarrier believed that he must possess.

For that reason, when it was not possible to avoid Siward, his bearing
toward him was carefully civil; for that