ain Austin
delivered his quota to the general discussion.

"After all," he said, "if it wasn't for sport, our country houses would
be useless."

"Not at all!" Deyes declared. "Country houses should exist for----"

"For what, Mr. Deyes? Do tell us," Lady Peggy implored.

"For bridge!" he declared. "For giving weary married people the
opportunity for divorce, and as an asylum from one's creditors."

Wilhelmina shook her head as she gathered up her cards.

"You are not at your best to-day, Gilbert," she said. "The allusion to
creditors is prehistoric! No one has them nowadays. Society is such a
hop-scotch affair that our coffers are never empty."

"What a Utopian sentiment!" Lady Peggy murmured.

"We can't agree, can we?" Deyes whispered in her ear.

"You! Why they say that you are worth a million," she protested.

"If I am I remain poor, for I cannot spend it," he declared.

"Why not?" his hostess asked him from across the table.

"Because," he answered, "I am cursed with a single vice, trailing its
way through a labyrinth of virtues. I am a miser!"

Lady Peggy laughed incredulously.

"Rubbish!" she exclaimed.

"Dear lady, it is nothing of the sort," he answered, shaking his head
sadly. "I have felt it growing upon me for years. Besides, it is
hereditary. My mother opened a post-office savings bank account for me.
At an early age I engineered a corner in marbles and sold out at a huge
profit. I am like the starving dyspeptic at the rich man's feast."

Captain Austin intervened.

"I declare Diamonds," he announced, and the hand proceeded.

Wilhelmina leaned back in her chair as the last trick fell. Her eyes
were turned towards the window. She could just see the avenue of elms
down which her agent had ridden a short while since. Deyes, through half
closed eyes, watched her with some curiosity.

"If one dared offer a trifling coin of the realm----" he murmured.

"I was thinking of your theory," she interrupted. "According to you, I
suppose the whole world is made up of hunters and their quarry. Can you
tell, I wonder, by looking at people, to which order they belong?"

"It is easy," he answered. "Yet you must remember we are continually
changing places. The man who cracks the whip to-day is the hunted beast
to-morrow. The woman who mocks at her lover this afternoon is often the
slave-bearer when dusk falls. Swift changes like this are like rain upon
the earth. They keep us, at any rate, out of the asy