Rachel herself had disappeared, and he learned from Delia, who, in the course of her pacifying errands, met him and asked him whether he was going to play bridge, that she had gone upstairs with a headache.
This statement was received by Gerard with certain vague suspicions.
He entered the card-room, and found play in full swing at four different tables. As usual, Harry Van Santen was playing bridge, and Denver was having his usual luck at poker.
The table at which he sat was the nearest to the door communicating with the adjoining room, and it was also the nearest to the window, which was closed and hidden behind the drawn curtains.
Cecil Jones formed one of the poker party, and he was being eased of the money of which he had boasted.
But Gerard, who had now had time to consider his face well, was surprised to note in his usually sheepish face something which made him quite sure that there was some mystery about this friend of Miss Davison’s. He had suspected it before, but he was now sure of it. Not only was there under his expression of surface silliness an occasional look which showed intelligence of a quite unusual kind, but there was to-day in his manner a certain quiet watchfulness, which made Gerard think he was lying in wait for something.
What that something was—whether a signal from one of the Van Santens, or a scene, or a signal from somebody else and another sort of scene—he could not be sure. But that there was trouble of some kind in the air he knew quite well.
He almost thought, indeed, as he watched Cecil Jones from the doorway, and saw him losing his money with little silly exclamations of impatience or surprise, that the man appeared to be listening for something.
Once or twice he glanced in the direction of the window, although, as it was closed and curtained, he could see nothing whatever of it.
He lost more and more heavily as time went on, and bore his losses with wonderful equanimity.