"No - oh, no!" he said, stammering a little. "I just thought I'd get myself a drink - we've finished at our table!"
"Of course!" she said, with a graciousness he found even more quelling than her asperity. "You know your way to the dining-room, don't you?"
At the table he had deserted, in the front drawingroom, Lady Nest sighed: "I can't imagine what induces him even to try to play Bridge. Darling Jennifer, too cruel to have saddled you with him! My heart bleeds for you! Why do you suppose he took you out of your heart call?"
"God knows!" responded Miss Cheadle, a raw-boned lady with the indefinable look of a horsewoman. "Feel a bit sorry for the boy: got something on his mind."
"I don't want to depress you, Jenny," remarked Mr. Charles Ashbourne, "but, according to Roddy, you've been fobbed off with a stop-gap. Jack Doveridge stood Lilias up at the last moment."
"Oh, well!" said Miss Cheadle largemindedly. "That's all right: somebody had to have him!"
At this moment, two redoubtable ladies at a table in the middle of the room created a diversion by arguing with steadily mounting choler on the correct play of the hand which one of them had just (according to the other) mismanaged. It was a cardinal rule that these devoted friends should be kept apart at any Bridge-party, for each had a voice like the screech of a macaw, and neither had the smallest control over her temper. It was of course impossible to keep them apart throughout a duplicate contest, but it had been hoped that since one was North and the other West no cause for dissension would arise. Unfortunately, North saw fit to criticise West's play, which, considering she and her partner had benefited by it to the tune of five hundred points above the line, was unhandsome of her. An altercation arose which showed every sign of developing into a brawl; and Mrs. Haddington came back into the room to find play at all tables at a standstill. It said much for her tact that she was speedily able to soothe both ruffled ladies; and still more for her admirable command over herself that she did not betray her annoyance by so much as the flicker of an eyelid. Only Beulah, entering the room a moment later, knew that she was at all put out. Mrs. Haddington, smiling with determination, said to her in an acid undertone: "I thought I told you to keep an eye on things for me!"
Play was resumed, but another hitch soon occurred, which was explained by Dr Westruther, who came up from the library to say that they were held up there by Seaton-Carew's absence. "Called away to the telephone in the middle of a hand," he said. "They're waiting to finish it."
"Still telephoning?" said Mrs. Haddington. "Nonsense! He can't be. Or, if he is, he oughtn't to be!" she added, with a perfunctory laugh. "It's really very naughty and inconsiderate of him, and I shall scold him severely! Roddy, do go and remind him that he's holding everyone up! In my boudoir: you know where it is!"
"I'll soon have him out of it," said Sir Roderick, who disliked him, and had already confided to Dr Westruther that the fellow was a bounder.