"The situation may produce its martyr," I said.
Lady Derryclare glanced quickly at me, and then at Chichester, who was now expounding to Philippa the method, peculiar to himself, by which he secured mountain mutton of the essential age.
At nine-thirty that night I sat with my hostess and my wife, engaged in a domestic game of Poker-patience. Shaded lights and a softly burning turf fire shed a mellow radiance; an exquisite completeness was added by a silken rustle of misty rain against the south window.
"Do you think they'll start in this weather?" said Philippa sympathetically.
"Seventy-five, and one full house, ten, that's eighty-five," said Lady Derryclare abstractedly. "Start? you may be quite sure they'll start! Then we three shall have an empty house. That ought to count at least twenty!"
Lady Derryclare was far too good a hostess not to appreciate the charms of solitude; that Philippa and I should be looked upon as solitude was soothing to the heart of the guest, the heart that, however good the hostess, inevitably conceals some measure of apprehension.
"Has Mr. Chichester been on board the Sheila?" I enquired, with elaborate unconcern.
"Never!" said Lady Derryclare melodramatically.
"I believe he has done some yachting?" I continued.
"A five-hundred-ton steam yacht to the West Indies!" replied Lady Derryclare. "Bathrooms and a chef——"