"You're getting beyond me," she declared. "It sounds a little savage."
Deyes dealt the cards slowly, talking all the while.
"Sport is savage," he declared. "No one can deny it. Whether the quarry be human or animal, the end is death. But of all its varieties, give me the hunting of man by man, the brain of the hunter coping with the wiles of the hunted, both human, both of the same order. The game's even then, for at any moment they may change places--the hunter and his quarry. It's finer work than slaughtering birds at the coverside. It gives your sex a chance, Lady Peggy."
"Why not?" he murmured. "I have been both quarry and hunter. Most of us have more or less! I declare Hearts!"
Again there was an interval of silence, broken only by the stock phrases of the game, and the soft patter of the cards upon the table. Once more the hand was played out and the cards gathered up. Captain 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!"
"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."