When she got home on Saturday evening she found her mother playing a game of double vingt un with a certain cousin, one Sydney Arundel. The game is very good for the rapid interchange of coins: you should make it a time game, to end in half an hour—one hour—two hours, and at the end you will find that you have had a very pretty little gamble. Mrs. Arundel liked nothing better than a game of cards—provided the stakes were high enough to give it excitement. To play cards for love is indeed insipid: it is like a dinner of cold boiled mutton or like sandwiches of veal. The lady would play anything, piquet, écarté, double dummy—and her daughter Elsie hated the sight of cards. As for the cousin, he was on the Stock Exchange: he came often to dinner and to talk business after dinner. He was a kind of musical box or barrel organ in conversation, because he could only play one tune. His business as well as his pleasure was in the money market.
'So you have come home, Elsie?' said Mrs. Arundel coldly.
'Yes, I have come home.' Elsie seated herself at the window and waited.
'Now, Sydney'—her mother took up the cards. 'My deal—will you take any more?'
She was a good-looking woman still, though past fifty: her abundant hair had gone pleasantly gray, her features were fine, her brown eyes were quick and bright: her lips were firm, and her chin straight. She was tall and of good figure: she was clad in black silk, with a large gold chain about her neck and good lace upon her shoulders. She wore many rings and a bracelet. She liked, in fact, the appearance of wealth as well as the possession of it: she therefore always appeared in costly raiment: her house was furnished with a costly solidity: everything, even the bindings of her books, was good to look at: her one man-servant looked like the responsible butler of a millionaire, and her one-horse carriage looked as if it belonged to a dozen.
The game went on. Presently, the clock struck ten. 'Time,' said the lady. 'We must stop. Now then. Let us see—I make it seventy-three shillings.—Thank you. Three pounds thirteen—an evening not altogether wasted.—And now, Sydney, light your cigar. You know I like it. You shall have your whisky and soda—and we will talk business. There are half-a-dozen things that I want to consult you about. Heavens! why cannot I be admitted to the Exchange? A few women among you—clever women, like myself, Sydney—would wake you up.'
They talked business for an hour, the lady making notes in a little book, asking questions and making suggestions. At last the cousin got up—it was eleven o'clock—and went away. Then her mother turned to Elsie.
'It is a great pity,' she said, 'that you take no interest in these things.'
'I dislike them very much, as you know,' said Elsie.
'Yes—you dislike them because they are of real importance. Well—never mind.—You have been out with the young man, I suppose?'