"Heroic measures!" he laughed. "But—consolation note!—we're two over two full tables. Therefore we'll have to cut in and out. That'll give us some time to ourselves."
"Yes," she agreed: "but it'll be just our luck to be disengaged at different times."
He paused in amused incredulity. "Do you really want to talk to me as badly as all that?"
She nodded, curtaining her eyes.
"Very much," she said softly.
They entered the card-room and were summoned to different tables. Matthias cut and edged Mrs. Cardrow out by a single pip. How Venetia fared he did not learn, more than that she was to play while Marbridge was to stay out the first rubber.
He played even less intelligently than usual, with a mind distracted. Venetia's new attitude, pleasant as had been all their association, was a development of disconcerting suddenness; or else he had been witless and blind beyond relief. And yet—how could he say? He was so frequently misled by faculties befogged with dreaming, that overlooked when they did not flatly deny the obvious: it was possible that Helena had been more wise than he.
A sense of strain handicapped his judgment; whether atmospheric or bred of his own emotion, he could not tell. And yet, plumbing the deeps of his humour, he discovered nothing there more exacting than bewilderment, more exciting than hope. On the other hand, he could fix upon nothing in the bearing of these amiable people to lead him to believe that the feeling of tensity to which he was susceptible was not the creation of his own fancy. They played with a certain abandon of enjoyment, absorbed in their diversion....
Looking past Venetia, at the other table—Venetia slim and tall and worshipful in a wonderful black gown that rendered dazzling the whiteness of her flesh—he could see Mrs. Cardrow and Marbridge at the piano in the drawing-room. The woman sat all but motionless, white arms alone moving graciously in the half-light as her deft hands wandered over the key-board. Marbridge, his arms folded, lounged over the piano, his back to the card-room. The eloquent movements of his round, dark head, its emphatic nods and argumentative waggings, seemed to indicate that he was bearing the burden of their talk; but the music, hushed though it was, covered his accents. The woman was looking up into his face with an expression of quick, pleased interest, her lips, half-parted, smiling.
It did not occur to Matthias to wonder about the substance of their conversation. But for a sure clue to the intrigue of Venetia's heart—and his own—he would have given worlds.