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That is to say, Lady Tressilvain did the discussing; Malcourt, bland, amiable, remained uncommunicatively polite, parrying everything so innocently that his sister, deceived, became plainer in her questions concerning the fortune he was supposed to have married, and more persistent in her suggestions of a winter in New York a delightful and prolonged family reunion, in which the Tressilvains were to figure as distinguished guests and virtual pensioners of everybody connected with his wife's family.
Tressilvain said little but drank a great deal of whisky his long, white, bony fingers were always spread around his glass unusually long fingers for such a short man, and out of all proportion to the scant five-foot frame, topped with a little pointed head, in which the eyes were set exactly as glass eyes are screwed into the mask of a fox.
Now he halted, dark eyes roving about the room. They fell and lingered on a card-table where some empty glasses decorated the green baize top. "Bridge?" he queried. "Unfortunately," growled Portlaw. "Who?" "Mrs. Malcourt and I versus your ah talented family." "Mrs. Malcourt doesn't gamble." "Tressilvain and I did." "Were you badly stung, dear friend?" Portlaw muttered.
The Malcourts are rotten; everybody knows it. Tressilvain is worse; my sister says so. As I told you, the old families are done for all except yours " "I am the last of mine, Louis." "The last and best " "Are you laughing?" "No; you are the only human one I've ever heard of among your race the sweetest, soundest, best " "I?... What you say is too terrible to laugh at.
Personally I think it's rather a stupid way to spend an evening " "But," interrupted Portlaw, "there'll be nothing stupid about it if the table begins to tip up here under our very fingers. I'll bet you, Louis, that it doesn't. Do you care to bet?" "Shouldn't the lights be put out?" asked Tressilvain.
"Well, Helen!" he said at last; and Lady Tressilvain started, and her husband rose to the full height of his five feet nothing, dropping the pack which he had been so nimbly manipulating for his wife's amusement.
"Get a pad and pencil," whispered Lady Tressilvain to Shiela. So Shiela left the table, found a pad and pencil, and seated herself near a candle by the window; and as each letter was rapped out by the table, she put it down in order.
To my friend, William Van Bueren Portlaw, I leave my dogs, rods, and guns with a recommendation that he use them and his legs. "7th. To my sister, Lady Tressilvain, I leave my book of comic Bridge rules, and to her husband a volume of Methodist hymns. "I'll be in town again, shortly, and expect you to have my will ready to be signed and witnessed.
And still Malcourt's monotonous voice droned on, and still the raps sounded from the table. Portlaw hung over it as though hypnotized; Tressilvain had fallen to moistening his lips with the tip of his tongue, stealthy eyes always roaming about the candle-lit room as though searching for something uncanny lurking in the shadows.
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