Mrs. Hepworth made an impatient gesture as if at her own unusual lack of adequate expression.
"Do you play cards at all?" she asked, "bridge or—"
Fuschia could not suppress one stare of surprise. "Play bridge!" she murmured, wondering what that had to do with the matter. "No, I have no card sense. Strange, too, for papa has a lot."
"The reason I asked was this," in rather diffident explanation; "I was wondering if you could appreciate what it means to make an unexpected play which takes several tricks—to play trumps in such a way as to make the other players gasp with surprise, to—"
"Oh, I know what you mean," said Fuschia comprehendingly, a light dawning in her puzzled eyes. "You are talking about playing the game. Why, of course, I understand. That's all there is; that's what I'm on this dizzy old planet for."
But although a basis of mutual agreement and understanding was thus established, Dita seemed still to struggle with an unwonted embarrassment.
It was not, however, within Fuschia to prolong a situation of this kind. She bent forward, her elbows on her knees, her fingers covered with moonstone rings clasped lightly in front of her, her eyes full of a thousand twinkles and the upturned corners of her mouth curving almost to her eyes.
"Let's get down to cases, Mrs. Hepworth, man to man. Is it a go?"
Perdita drew a breath of relief and smiled back. She certainly was not one of the few, the very few, who could resist the twinkles in Fuschia's eyes.
"It's a go," she answered; "then man to man, it is this way. You have made it easy, you see, for me to say the things I wanted to, although I did not know in what feminine phrases I might have to clothe them. But you and I are, at present, very much in the public eye. Now every one is waiting to see what our attitude toward each other will be. It is assumed openly by the newspapers, as you probably know, that there is a sort of woman's war on between us. Now, Miss Fleming, I want—"