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Sibley, complacently. "No," she answered, laconically; but for reasons he little understood. "Now you show your taste, Miss Mayhew." "I fear I do. Hush!" But when Van Berg's solo ended, she breathed a deep sigh. Then Stanton's rich, but uncultivated bass voice joined in the melody. Still the effect was better tahn would have been expected from amateurs.
Bertie van Tahn prepared to use his towel as a weapon of precision, but reflecting that he had a good deal of unprotected coast-line himself, and that Clovis was equipped with a fountain-pen as well as a towel, he relapsed pacifically into the depths of his chair. "May one hear extracts from the immortal work?" he asked.
The Smithly-Dubbs never quite recovered from their unnerving experience. They have given up politics and taken to doing good. "Starling Chatter and Oakhill have both dropped back in the betting," said Bertie van Tahn, throwing the morning paper across the breakfast table. "That leaves Nursery Tea practically favourite," said Odo Finsberry.
"And where are the Klammersteins?" asked Lady Blonze; "they're usually so punctual." "Another character pose, perhaps," said Bertie van Tahn; "'the Lost Ten Tribes." "But there are only three of them. Besides, they'll want their lunch. Hasn't anyone seen anything of them?" "Didn't you take them out in your car?" asked Blanche Boveal, addressing herself to Cyril Skatterly.
"Let's jolly well hope he does," said Bertie van Tahn; "under the circumstances a second cousin is almost as useful as second sight." "That stable ought to know something, if knowledge is to be found anywhere," said Mrs. Packletide hopefully. "I expect you'll find he'll echo my fancy for Motorboat," said Colonel Drake. At this moment the subject had to be hastily dropped.
"Don't interrupt me with your childish prattle," he observed to Bertie van Tahn, who had slung himself languidly into a neighbouring chair and looked conversationally inclined; "I'm writing deathless verse." Bertie looked interested. "I say, what a boon you would be to portrait painters if you really got to be notorious as a poetry writer.
"'I do not think, Christine confided afterwards to a friend, who re-confided it to Bertie van Tahn, 'that I shall ever be able to touch PATE DE FOIE GRAS again. It would bring back memories of that awful evening. "For the next two or three days the nieces made plans for returning to England or moving on to some other resort where there was no casino.
The brains of clubland were much exercised in seeking out possible merit where none was very obvious to the naked intelligence, and the house-party at Lady Susan's was possessed by the same uncertainty and irresolution that infected wider circles. "It is just the time for bringing off a good coup," said Bertie van Tahn. "Undoubtedly. But with what?" demanded Clovis for the twentieth time.
On the other hand he was able to devote some wakeful hours to exercises in breathing wrath and fury against Bertie van Tahn. Breakfast at Blonzecourt was a scattered meal, on the "come when you please" principle, but the house-party was supposed to gather in full strength at lunch. On the day after the "Game" had been started there were, however, some notable absentees.
Bertie van Tahn, who was so depraved at seventeen that he had long ago given up trying to be any worse, turned a dull shade of gardenia white, but he did not commit the error of dashing out of the room like Odo Finsberry, a young gentleman who was understood to be reading for the Church and who was possibly disturbed at the thought of scandals he might hear concerning other people.
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