"'Tis an awkward thing to play with souls,
And matter enough to save one's own."
—Browning.
Mr. Albert and Miss Bertha Hadwell having arrived at Hadwell Heights their aunt had promptly issued invitations for the "bridge" of which she had spoken at her "tea." Hadwell Heights was "en fête." The guests had arrived and were playing, busily, though not for money. Apart from the fact that the guests of honour were young, Mrs. Hadwell disapproved of "bridge-gambling."
"I never win at games," she confided to Lynn. "And I don't enjoy losing money even if I can afford it. And it's such a nice, cheap way of getting a reputation for steadiness and sobriety and high morality and all that. I love to be known for things that I haven't even a bowing acquaintance with. And it seems so delicious to say with a perfectly straight face, 'No, I never play for money. I don't approve of it.' It seems such a rebuke to the worldly-minded and the frivolous and all that lot."
Mrs. Hadwell, though, might be depended upon to furnish very pretty prizes. Besides which her house was famed for its delightful entertainments of all descriptions. For which reasons, and for several others, her pretty drawing-room was thronged.
Lynn Thayer had refused to play, offering to bear her hostess company, however, and to help her in any way she could. She sat now in an alcove of the great old-fashioned bay-window, watching the players absently, and trying to straighten out several matters which threatened to become hopelessly entangled in her mind. This was hardly the place to solve these problems, but, as they became daily and hourly more imminent, she felt that she might as well face them at one time as at another, so far as she was able.
Her reflections chimed oddly with the scraps of conversation which were wafted to her ears from time to time.
"What shall I say if Gerald does ask me to marry him?" she thought, her face darkening. "How can I accept him? And then again—how can I refuse him? If he would only wait—but it is not reasonable to suppose that he would. How can I—how shall I answer him?"
"We-ll," interposed a voice, faintly, "I make it diamonds."
"Oh, why, Mrs. Hall?"
"Oh, did you have a good suit? Oh, dear! well, never mind!—I suppose we can't take it back, can we?—no? well, I suppose not. That's the worst of"—