“Very pleasant and gratifying it is,” he said, “to see our cousins settling down here in the way they are doing. Jeannie—Miss Jeannie said to me to-day how much she enjoyed Wroxton.”
“And does Mr. Avesham enjoy it?” asked Miss Clara.
“I have not had an opportunity of talking to him about it,” said the Colonel, cautiously, “but he must be hard to please—he must be hard to please if he does not. What a charming life for a young man! For a few hours a day he has his work, but when that is over, what a choice! A game of whist at the club, the pleasures of the home circle—and Miss Fortescue is such a shrewd, delightful woman—or, or, if his tastes are literary, a call at Villa Montrose.”
“Colonel Raymond, how can you!” cried Miss Clara, in an ecstasy of slyness; “how can you be so wicked?”
“Robert likes his joke,” said Mrs. Raymond, in her colourless voice. “He means nothing, Miss Clifford. Do you, Robert?”
“My dear, a soldier sticks to what he says,” said the Colonel. “Or Arthur can come and take a glass of the best port in the Midlands with Constance and me.”
“Does Mr. Avesham play whist well?” asked Phœbe.
Now if the Colonel was proud of anything it was of his reputation as a whist-player. He was known to play for “points,” a term vague to the Miss Cliffords, but with an undefined air of extravagance and recklessness about it. And though Arthur had never at present had the privilege of playing with the Colonel, the latter answered without a pause.
“A good, sound game,” he said. “Perhaps he does not know the subtleties of the thing as well as—as well as some old stagers at it, but with an hour or two of Cavendish a day, which I am not ashamed myself to spend on it, he will develop into a fine player. Wonderful man, Cavendish. Whist is not a game, it is an institution, a national institution.”
And the Colonel’s chest became gigantic.