"Observe, Mr.Plank, that under this becoming flush are the same old freckles you saw at Shotover." And she laughed that sweet, careless laugh of an adolescent and straightened her boyish figure, pretty head held high, adding: "Kemp won't let me 'improve' myself, or I'd do it." "You are perfect," said Sylvia, rising from the table, her own lovely, rounded, youthful figure condoning the exaggeration; "you're sufficiently sweet as you are.

Good people, if you are ready, we will go through the ceremony of cutting for partners--unless otherwise you decide.

How say you ?" "I don't care to enter the scramble for a man," cried Grace.

"If it's to choose, I'd as soon choose Marion." Plank looked at Leila, who laughed.
"All right; choose, then!" said Sylvia.

"Howard, you're dying, of course, to play with me, but you're looking very guiltily at Agatha." The major asked Leila at once; so Plank fell to Sylvia, pitted against Marion and Grace Ferrall.
A few moments later the quiet of the library was broken by the butler entering with decanters and ice, and glasses that tinkled frostily.
Play began at table Number One on a passed make of no trumps by Sylvia, and at the other table on a doubled and redoubled heart make, which sent a delicate flush into Agatha's face, and drove the last vestige of lingering thoughtfulness from Quarrier's, leaving it a tense, pallid, and expressionless mask, out of which looked the velvet-fringed eyes of a woman.
Of all the faces there at the two tables, Sylvia's alone had not changed, neither assuming the gambler's mask nor the infatuated glare of the amateur.