“I really don’t see that we are called upon to decide those questions,” she said. “Each one must lay down his own laws of conduct. As a matter of fact, it’s a sentiment, and not any law, human or divine, that guides us in the matter, isn’t it? You can’t pretend that card-playing comes under the head of work, can you?”
Stung by what he took to be her indifference, Gerard made a very indiscreet speech.
“Work! I’m not so sure of that,” said he.
Miss Davison turned to him quickly.
“Pray, what do you mean?” she asked sharply.
But he did not venture to say more. Indeed, he felt that he had nothing to say. He could not well have defined the secret instinct which made him vaguely suspect that there was something wrong about the play, just because Miss Davison was in the house at the time.
He certainly would not have liked to avow that that was his reason for his faint suspicions. But that it was because Rachel, who had been concerned none the less he knew, at the bottom of his heart, in other dubious transactions, was present at the Priory, that he suspected, on hearing that Arthur Aldington had lost his money, that all was not as fair as it looked in the play.
He stammered and would have changed the subject; but she would not let him.
“Surely you don’t imagine,” she said, “that you would meet Lady Sylvia and the Marchioness at houses where there was anything wrong! I’m afraid, Mr. Buckland, you let your Puritanism carry you a great deal too far.”
She spoke with so much emphasis that he felt ashamed of what he had said, the more so that he really had no grounds for supposing that the two wealthy young Americans would do anything that was not fair. Indeed, he had himself heard one of them trying to persuade a silly fellow not to play poker any more.