They did at first. Lionel happened to be badly off his game. Joyce played well and steadily. The young man’s mortification deepened as he hit ball after ball into the rough, which, of course, made Joyce’s following stroke all the more difficult. A couple of balls were lost in the heather and whins. On each occasion Lady Margot left the Squire to help her opponents to find their ball. Lionel’s ever-increasing depression amused and pleased her. She liked men to be “keen”—up to a point. That point must not be a “vanishing point.” For instance, the keenness of clever novelists kept them locked up, inaccessible, invisible. She rallied Lionel gaily:
“What does it matter?”
He answered irritably:
“Nothing to you, Margot. But I’m wrecking Joyce’s game, spoiling her morning, confound it!”
Joyce looked at him. Lady Margot’s eyes twinkled. What she had confidently expected came to pass. The parson’s daughter “gave herself away.” Her fleeting glance at a worried and apologetic partner was unmistakable. It flashed its message upon the ambient air, and was gone! Her voice, however, remained under control.
“You are not wrecking my game, Lionel. I like difficult shots.”
“Do you?” murmured Margot. “And perhaps you regard golf as a sort of epitome of life?”
Joyce flashed another glance at her.
“I suppose I do.”
“If you found yourself ‘bunkered,’ you would not lose heart?”