"However, they choose to make up the tables," said Jack Rivett lazily. Then, as though on an after thought: "I doubt whether Mr. Edgerton bothers with cards; do you?"
"I don't mind, except that I've cut out playing for stakes," replied Edgerton, perfectly aware of Jack Rivett's kindly consideration in giving him a chance to escape gracefully, and a trifle amused, too, that the young man should suppose he cared what anybody in the place might think of him.
Servants were now arranging the old-fashioned colonial card tables in the noticeably old-fashioned colonial card room. A young girl or two appeared at the arched doorway, lingering on the threshold as several of the men came out to gossip.
Then the hostess appeared with the others; groups formed, shifted, and gradually subsided into seats; seals of fresh packs were broken, scores penciled, the first hands dealt at auction.
Diana, Colonel Curmew, a very pretty Mrs. Wemyss, and Mr. Rivett sat together; at another table Silvette, Mr. Snaith, Christine Rivett, and a Mr. Dineen—a gentleman weighing some two hundred pounds and wearing an attractive snub nose and a pair of merry gray-blue eyes.
And the awful hush of auction descended without a sound.
Edgerton and his hostess and a Judge Wicklow and a Mrs. Lorrimore—a fair, fat, blue-eyed thing with a cupid-bow mouth as sweet as the smile that abode there—settled themselves to Chinese Kahn, a game spelled in various ways and played in several more.
"Stakes?" inquired Mrs. Lorrimore with businesslike directness.
"Your pleasure," replied Judge Wicklow in the deep, thick voice celebrated and feared where judicial procedures are thickest and most unimportant.
"Neither Mr. Edgerton nor I care to gamble—I think," said Mrs. Rivett timidly.