her winged wheel; and the cards ran high--so high that stacks dwindled or
toppled within the half-hour, and Mortimer grew redder and redder, and
Major Belwether blander and blander, and Alderdene's face wore a
continual nervous snicker, showing every white hound's tooth, and the
ice in the tall glasses clinked ceaselessly.

It was late when Quarrier "sat in," with an expressionless
acknowledgment of Siward's presence, and an emotionless raid upon his
neighbour's resources with the first hand dealt, in which he
participated without drawing a card.

And always Siward, eyes on his cards, seemed to see Quarrier before him,
his overmanicured fingers caressing his silky beard, the symmetrical
pompadour dark and thick as the winter fur on a rat, tufting his smooth
blank forehead.

It was very late when Siward first began to be aware of his increasing
deafness, the difficulty, too, that he had in making people hear, the
annoying contempt in Quarrier's woman-like eyes. He felt that he was
making a fool of himself, very noiselessly somehow--but with more racket
than he expected when he miscalculated the distance between his hand and
a decanter.

It was time for him to go--unless he chose to ask Quarrier for an
explanation of that sneer which he found distasteful. But there was too
much noise, too much laughter.

Besides he had a matter to attend to--the careful perusal of his mother's
letter to Mrs. Ferrall.