"I am a little gaudy, I am afraid," she laughed, as she took a cue from the rack, "but so comfortable! How many will you give me in a hundred?"
"I have never seen you play," John reminded her. "I am not much good myself."
They played two games, and John had hard work to escape defeat. As they were commencing the third, the butler entered the room, bearing a telegram. Lady Hilda took it from the salver, glanced at it, and threw it into the fire.
"What a nuisance!" she exclaimed. "The Daunceys can't come."
John, who was enjoying himself very much, murmured only a word or two of polite regret. He had never got over his distaste for meeting strangers.
"Can't be helped, I suppose," Lady Hilda remarked. "There is nothing from Flo Henderson yet. We'll have one more game, and then I'll ring her up."
They played another game of billiards, and sat by the fire for a little while. The silence outside, and the air of repose about the place, were delightful to John after several months of London.
"I wonder you ever leave here," he said.
She laughed softly.
"You forget that I am a lone woman. Solitude, as our dear friend wrote in her last novel, is a paradise for two, but is an irritant for one."