Baynell and Ashley rose to offer her a chair, and the latter proposed to deal her a hand in the game.
"Not this round," she returned, "as the game has already commenced. Besides, I am quite chilly. I shall sit by the fire and read the evening paper until you play out the hand."
She seated herself near the fire, shivered once or twice, and held out her dainty fingers to it with exactly the utilitarian manner of some elderly woman, whose house-keeping errands have detained her in the cold, and who extends gnarled, misshapen, chapped, wrinkled hands, soliciting comfort from the warmth. Then she took up the paper and held the sheet to catch the lamplight from the centre-table upon it.
"Why doesn't she put on her 'specs'? She knows she needs them," Colonel Ashley said to himself in a sort of whimsical exasperation. Her figure was slim and girlish, sylphlike as she reclined in the large fauteuil; her hair glittered golden in the flicker of the fire and the sheen of the lamp; her face, with its serious expression intent on the closely printed columns, might almost seem a sculptor's study of perfect facial symmetry. Her incongruous indifference, her elderly assumptions,—if, indeed, she was conscious of the effect of her manner,—all betokened that she considered it no part of her duty, and certainly no point of interest, to entertain young men.
"We are mere boys to her, Baynell and I; she'll never see her sixtieth birthday again. I have known younger grandmothers," was Colonel Ashley's farcical thought.
Her nullity of attitude toward him was so complete that she limited the possibilities of his imagination. He began to devote himself to the gentle pursuit in hand with a freshened ardor.
Around and around the draw went, almost in absolute silence. Now and again the tabling of matching cards sounded with the sharp impact of triumph, but this was growing infrequent as the hands were thus depleted. The firelight flickered on the incongruous group,—the bearded faces of the military men, the gold-laced uniforms, with buttons glimmering like points of light, the infantine softness of the "ladies," with their fluttering ringlets and gala attire, the gray head and ascetic aspect of the judge. The heat had enhanced the odor of a bowl of violets on the table in the centre of the room; as the flames rose and fell, the lion on the rug seemed to stir about, to rouse from his lair.
Outside the rain still fell in torrents; the tumult of the gush from the gutter hard by gave intimations of great volume of overflow. At long intervals a drop fell hissing down the chimney on the coals where the fire had burned to a white heat. The wind sang like a trump, and from far away the reverberations of a train of cars came with a sort of muffled sonority that was almost indistinguishable from the vibrations of the earth. One hardly knew whether the approach of the train was felt or heard.
"I can't see how a locomotive can keep the rails in such a night as this," Colonel Ashley remarked, lifting his head to listen. "I had rather my command would be playing the duck down there in the puddles than crossing that half-submerged bridge on that troop train."
"Are they transporting troops now?" asked Judge Roscoe, casually. He was a lawyer and knew the general inappropriateness and inadmissibility of a leading question. He had, however, no interest in the response, for the transit of troops did not necessarily intimate reënforcements to the garrison, and hence the expectation of attack, but perhaps merely the intention of distant activity.