“Oh, I say, Raymond!” he said.
Raymond shook him off. “Leave me alone, can’t you?” he said angrily.
Then he turned to his father. “I didn’t mean to spill the wine, father,” he said. “It was an accident.”
“Accidents are liable to happen, when one loses one’s temper,” said Philip. “Ring the bell, please.”
There were two tables for cards laid out in the drawing-room, and Raymond, coming in only a few seconds after the others, found that, without waiting for him, the bridge-table had already been made up with Lady Hester, Violet, his father, and Colin. They had not given him a chance to play there, and now for the next hour he was condemned to play whist with his grandmother and his uncle and aunt, a dreary pastime.
At ten old Lady Yardley went dumbly to bed, and there was the choice between sitting here until the bridge was over, or of following Uncle Ronald into the smoking-room. But that he found he could not do; his jealousy of Colin, both as regards his father and as regards Violet, constrained him as with cords to stop and watch them, and contrast their merriment with his own ensconced and sombre broodings.
And then there was Violet herself. Colin’s conjecture had been perfectly right, for in the fashion of Staniers, he must be considered as in the process of falling in love with her. The desire for possession, rather than devotion, was the main ingredient in the bubbling vat, and that was very sensibly present. She made a ferment in his blood, and though he would not have sacrificed anything which he really valued, such as his prospective lordship of Stanier, for her sake, he could not suffer the idea that she should not be his. He knew, too, how potent in her was the Stanier passion for the home, and that he counted as his chief asset, for he had no illusion that Violet was in love with him. Nor was she, so he thought, in love with Colin; the two were much more like a couple of chums than lovers.
So he sat and watched them round the edge of the newspaper which had beguiled Uncle Ronald’s impatience for dinner. The corner where he sat was screened from the players by a large vase of flowers on the table near them, and Raymond felt that he enjoyed, though without original intention, the skulking pleasures of the eavesdropper.
Colin, as usual, was to the fore. Just now he was dummy to his partner, Aunt Hester, who, having added a pair of tortoise-shell spectacles to complete her early-Victorian costume, was feeling a shade uneasy. She had just done what she most emphatically ought not to have done, and was afraid that both her adversaries had perceived it. Colin had perceived it, too; otherwise the suit of clubs was deficient. Violet had already alluded to this.
“Oh, Aunt Hester!” cried Colin. “What’s the use of pretending you’ve not revoked? Don’t cling on to that last club; play it, and have done with it. If you don’t, you’ll revoke again.”