Still, nobody would have fancied that Ada Ratcliffe had any such ideas just then. Her face was quietly tranquil, and the pose she had fallen into in the big basket chair was, if not quite unstudied, a singularly graceful one. In her hands lay a Spanish fan, a beautiful, costly thing of silk and feathers and fretted ebony which Lister had given her a few days earlier. He sat on a block of lava watching her with a little significant gleam that she was perfectly conscious of in his usually apathetic eyes. Still, though he had a heavy face of the kind one seldom associates with self-restraint, there was nothing in his expression which could have jarred upon a woman of the most sensitive temperament. There were not many things which Albert Lister had much reverence for, but during the last few weeks a change had been going on in him, and it was a blind, unreasoning devotion which none of his friends would have believed him capable of that he offered this girl.
His pleasures had been coarse ones, and there was much in him that she might have shrunk from, but he had, at least, of late fought with the desires of his lower nature, and, for the time being, trampled on one or two of them. Slow of thought, and of very moderate intelligence, as he was, he had yet endeavored to purge himself of grossness before he ventured into her presence. He had not spoken for awhile when Mrs. Ratcliffe turned to him.
"You were not in the drawing-room last night," she said, and her manner subtly conveyed the impression that she had expected him. "No doubt you had something more interesting on hand?"
"No," said Lister slowly, "I don't think I had. In fact, I was playing cards!"
Mrs. Ratcliffe was a trifle perplexed, for she had now and then ventured to express her disapproval of one or two of his favorite distractions in a motherly fashion, and she could not quite understand his candor. It was, perhaps, natural that she should not credit him with a simple desire for honesty, since this was a motive which would not have had much weight with her.
"Ah," she said, with an air of playful reproach, "everybody plays cards nowadays, and I suppose one must not be too hard on you. Still, I think you know what my views are upon that subject."
They were scarcely likely to be very charitable ones, since she owed her own long struggle to the fact that there were few forms of gaming her husband had not unsuccessfully experimented with, and she continued feelingly, "If one had no graver objections, it is apt to prove expensive."
Lister laughed a little. "It proved so—to the other people—last night, but I think you are right. In fact, it's scarcely likely I'll touch a card again. In one way,"—and he appeared to reflect laboriously, "it's a waste of life."
His companions were both a trifle astonished. They had scarcely expected a sentiment of this kind from him, and though the elder lady would probably not have admitted it, gaming did not appear to her so objectionable a thing provided that one won and had the sense to leave off when that was the case. Ada Ratcliffe, however, smiled.
"To be candid, one would hardly have fancied you would look at it in that light," she said. "Still, you seem to have been changing your views lately."