d,
was not quite so unornamental as the curate had led us to
expect--looked slightly displeased, but Jack gave him no time for
remonstrance. He whisked Trix off, and began to serve all in a moment.
I had a vision of Lady Queenborough approaching from the house with
face aghast. The set went on; and, owing entirely to Newhaven's absurd
chivalry in sending all the balls to Jack Ives instead of following the
well-known maxim to "pound away at the lady," they beat us. Jack wiped
his brow, strolled up to the tea-table with Trix, and remarked in
exultant tones:

"We make a perfect couple, Miss Queenborough; we ought never to be
separated."

Dora did not ask the curate to dinner that night, but he dropped in
about nine o'clock to ask her opinion as to the hymns on Sunday; and
finding Miss Trix and Newhaven in the small drawing-room he sat down
and talked to them. This was too much for Trix; she had treated him
very kindly and had allowed him to amuse her; but it was impossible to
put up with presumption of that kind. Difficult as it was to discourage
Mr. Ives, she did it, and he went away with a disconsolate, puzzled
expression. At the last moment, however, Trix so far relented as to
express a hope that he was coming to tennis to-morrow, at which he
brightened up a little. I do not wish to be uncharitable--least of all
to a charming young lady--but my opinion is that Miss Trix did not wish
to set the curate altogether adrift. I think, however, that Lady
Queenborough must have spoken again, for when Jack did come to tennis,
Trix treated him with the most freezing civility and a hardly disguised
disdain, and devoted herself to Lord Newhaven with as much assiduity as
her mother could wish. We men, over our pipes, expressed the opinion
that Jack Ives's little hour of sunshine was passed, and that nothing
was left to us but to look on at the prosperous uneventful course of
Lord Newhaven's wooing. Trix had had her fun (so Algy Stanton bluntly
phrased it) and would now settle down to business.

"I believe, though," he added, "that she likes the curate a bit, you
know."

During the whole of the next day--Wednesday--Jack Ives kept away; he
had, apparently, accepted the inevitable, and was healing his wounded
heart by a strict attention to his parochial duties. Newhaven remarked
on his absence with an air of relief; and Miss Trix treated it as a
matter of no importance; Lady Queenborough was all smiles; and Dora
Polton restricted