"Thank you very much, but if you don't mind, I'll take you back to the ballroom; there's someone whom I've just thought I ought to be behaving nicely to."
"You'll behave as nicely as you can to me before you try your practised hand on anybody else. You've presence of mind, Mr. Tickell, but it won't do. You sit still until I let you go."
Except by violence, he could hardly have got away; he saw now why she had expressly directed him to take the farther chair. He could scarcely get out of the alcove without passing her; he did not see how he could do it if she did not choose to let him.
"At the game of poker to which I wish to call your attention, right at the close, you were betting against Mr. Sydney Beaton."
"If you don't mind, I'd much rather not talk about it; I don't know how you came to know anything about it, but you'll understand that it's rather a painful subject to me. What do you think of the floor--first-rate, isn't it?"
If he hoped to get her to confine her conversation to what he regarded as proper topics, his hope was doomed to disappointment, as she at once made plain.
"There was a good bit of money in the pool, at the point on which I wish to refresh your memory--over a thousand pounds, I've been given to understand, at the moment when Mr. Beaton covered your raise--you had a straight, king high; Mr. Beaton had a full, three aces and a pair of knaves, a much better hand than yours, and yet, I'm told, you claimed the pool."
"Then you've been misinformed. Excuse me, Miss Forster, I don't know what all this has to do with you."
"It has a very great deal to do with me. You claimed the pool----"
"I did not claim the pool; really, Miss Forster, I don't think this is the sort of thing to talk about at a dance."