scraped in the ballroom were temporarily silent. The pavilion was pretty well deserted, for the supper interval was not yet over. Horatia passed through the empty ballroom on Lethbridge’s arm, and was just stepping out on to the moonlit terrace when someone in the act of entering almost collided with her. It was the man in the Black Domino, who must have come in from the gardens by the terrace steps. Both fell back at once, but in some inexplicable fashion the edge of Horatia’s lace under-dress had got under the stranger’s foot. There was a rending sound, followed by an exclamation from Horatia, and conscience-stricken apologies from the offender.
“Oh, I beg a thousand pardons, ma’am! Pray forgive me! I would not for the world—Can’t think how I can have been so clumsy I’
“It does not signify, sir,” Horatia said coldly, gathering up her skirt in her hand, and walking through the long window on to the terrace.
The Black Domino stood aside for Lethbridge to follow her, and once more begging pardon, retreated into the ballroom.
“How horribly p-provoking!” Horatia said, looking at her hopelessly torn frill. “Now I shall have to go and p-pin it up. Of course it is quite ruined.”
“Shall I call him out?” Lethbridge said. “Faith, he deserves it! How came he to tread on your skirt at all?”
“G-goodness knows!” said Horatia. She gave a little chuckle. “He was d-dreadfully overcome, wasn’t he? Where shall I find you, R-Robert?”
“I’ll await you here,” he answered.
“And then we p-play cards?”
“And then we play cards,” he concurred.
“I w-wont be above a m-moment,” Horatia promised optimistically, and vanished into the ballroom again.
Lord Lethbridge strolled towards the low parapet that ran along the edge of the terrace, and stood leaning his hands on it, and looking idly down at the lily-pond a few feet below. Little coloured lights ringed it round, and some originally-minded person had designed a cluster of improbable flowers to hold tiny lamps. These floated on the still water, and had provoked a great deal of laughter and admiration earlier in the evening. Lord Lethbridge was observing them with a rather contemptuous smile twisting his lips when two hands came round his neck from behind, and jerked apart the strings that held his domino loosely together.
Startled, he tried to turn round, but the hands that in one lightning movement had ripped off his domino, closed like a flash about his throat, and tightened suffocatingly. He clawed at them, struggling violently. A drawling voice said in his ear: “I shan’t strangle you this time, Lethbridge. But I am afraid—yes, I am really afraid it will have to be that pond. I feel sure you will appreciate the necessity.”
The grip left Lord Lethbridge’s throat, but before he could turn a thrust between his shoulder-blades made him lose his balance. The parapet was too low to save him; he fell over it and into the lily-pond with a splash that extinguished the lights in that cluster of artificial flowers which he had looked at so scornfully a minute before.
A quarter of an hour later the ballroom had begun to fill again, and the fiddlers had resumed their task. Horatia came out on to the terrace and found several people standing there in little groups. She hesitated, looking for the Scarlet Domino, and saw him in a moment, sitting sideways on the parapet and meditatively surveying the pond below. She went up to him. “I w-wasn’t so very long, was I?”
He turned his head, and at once stood up. “Not at all,” he said politely. “And now—that little room!”
She had half advanced her hand to lay it on his arm, but at that she drew back. He stretched out his own, and took hers in it. “Is anything the matter?” he asked softly.
She seemed uncertain. “Your v-voice sounds queer. It—it is you, isn’t it?”
“But of course it is!” he said. “I think I must have swallowed a morsel of bone at supper, and scraped my throat. Will you walk, ma’am?”
She let him draw her hand through his arm. “Yes, b-but are you sure no one will come into the room? It would look very particular if anybody were to see me l-lose a lock of hair to you—if I d-do lose.”
“Who is to know you?” he said, holding the heavy curtain back from a window at the end of the terrace. “Butyou need not be alarmed. Once we have drawn the curtains—like that—no one will come in.”
Horatia stood by the table in the middle of the small saloon and watched the Scarlet Domino pull the curtains together. Suddenly, in spite of all her desire to do something outrageous, she wished that she had not pledged herself to this game. It had seemed innocent enough to dance with Lethbridge, to sup with him in the full eye of the public, but to be alone with him in a private room was another matter. All at once he seemed to her to have changed. She stole a look at his masked face, but the candles on the table left him in a shadow. She glanced towards the door, which very imperfectly shut off the noise of the violins. “The d-door, R-Rob-ert?”
“Locked,” he said. “It leads into the ballroom. Still nervous, Horry? Did I not say you were not a real gamester?”
“N-nervous? G-gracious no!” she said, on her mettle. “You’ll find I’m not such a poor g-gamester as that, sir!” She sat down at the table, and picked up one of the piquet packs that lay on it. “D-did you arrange everything, then?”
“Certainly,” he said, moving towards another table set against the wall. “A glass of wine, Horry?”
“N-no, thank you,” she replied, sitting rather straight in her chair, and casting yet another glance towards the curtained window.
He came back to the card-table, slightly moved the cluster of candles on it, and sat down. He began to shuffle one of the packs. “Tell me, Horry,” he said, “did you come with me tonight for this, or to annoy Rule?”
She gave a jump, and then laughed. “Oh, R-Robert, that is so very like you! You always g-guess right.”
He went on shuffling the pack. “May I know why he is to be baited?”
“No,” she replied. “I d-don’t discuss my husband, even with you, R-Robert.”
He bowed, ironically she thought. “A thousand pardons, my dear. He stands high in your esteem, I perceive.”
“Very high,” said Horatia. “Shall we c-cut?”
She won the cut, and electing to deal, picked up the pack, and gave a little expert shake of her arm to throw back the heavy fall of lace at her elbow. She was far too keen a gambler to talk while she played. As soon as she touched the cards she had never a thought for anything else, but sat with a look of serious, unwavering concentration on her face, and scarcely raised her eyes from her hand.
Her opponent gathered up his cards, glanced at them, and seemed to make up his mind what to discard without the smallest hesitation. Horatia, knowing herself to be pitted against a very fine player, refused to let herself be hurried, and took time over her own discard. The retention of a knave in her hand turned out well, and enabled her to spoil the major hand’s repique.
She lost the first game, but not by enough points to alarm her. Once she knew she had thrown a guard she should have kept, but for the most part she thought she had played well.
“My game,” said the Scarlet Domino. “But I think I had the balance of the cards.”
“A little perhaps,” she said. “Will you cut again for d-deal?”
The second game she won, in six quick hands. She had a suspicion that she had been allowed to win it, but if her opponent had played with deliberate carelessness it was never blatant enough to warrant any remark. She held her tongue therefore, and in silence watched him deal the first hand of the final game.
At the end of two hands she was sure that he had permitted her to win the second game. The cards had run very evenly throughout, and continued to do so, but now the more experienced player was ahead on points. She felt for the first time that she was up against a gamester immeasurably more skilled than herself. He never made a mistake, and the very precision of his play and judgement seemed to cast her own shortcomings into high relief. She played her cards shrewdly enough, but knew that her weakness lay in counting the odds against finding a desired card in the pick-up. Knowing him to be some forty points to the good, she began to discard with less caution, playing for a big hand.
The game had become for her a grim struggle, her opponent a masked figure of Nemesis; as she picked up her cards in the last hand her fingers quivered infinitesimally. Unless a miracle occurred there was no longer any hope of winning; the best she could expect was to avert a rubicon.
No miracle occurred. Since they were not playing for points it did not signify that she was rubiconed, yet, irrationally, when she added her score and found the total to be ninety-eight she could have burst into tears.
