‘Papa would not like to be deserted, dear. And Aunt Rhoda talked about coming in this evening.’ ‘Then I am in for a lecture,’ said Daphne. ‘Aunt Rhoda told me to go and see her, and I haven’t been.’ There was a brilliant light in the billiard-room, and the two girls went in through the conservatory and down the marble steps to the room where they were most likely to find their father at this time of the evening. Sir Vernon Lawford was not an enthusiastic billiard-player; indeed, he was not enthusiastic about anything, except his own merits, of which he had a very exalted opinion. He played a game of billiards every evening, because it kept him awake and kept him in gentle movement, which state of being he considered good for his health. He played gravely, as if he were doing his duty to society, and played well; and though he liked to have his elder daughter in the room while he played, and could bring himself to tolerate the presence of other people, he resented anything distracting in the way of conversation. Seen in the bright white light of the carcel lamps, Sir Vernon Lawford, at fifty-three years of age, was still a handsome man—a tall, well set up man, with a hard, clearly chiselled face, eyes of lightish gray, cold and severe in expression, gray hair and whiskers, hands of feminine delicacy in shape and colour, and something rigid and soldierlike in his bearing, as of a man who had been severely drilled himself, and would be a martinet in his rule over others. He was bending over the table with frowning brow, meditating a difficult stroke, as the two girls came softly in through the wide doorway—two tall slim figures in white gowns, with a background of flowers and palms showing dimly behind them, and beyond the foliage and flowers, the glimmer of a marble balustrade. A fashionably-dressed lady of uncertain age, the solitary spectator of the game, sat fanning herself in silence by the wide marble fire-place. Sir Vernon’s antagonist came quietly forward to greet Madoline and her sister. ‘I am so glad you have come in,’ he said confidentially. ‘I am getting ignominiously licked. I had a good mind to throw up the sponge and bolt out into the garden after you just now; only I thought if I didn’t take my licking decently, Sir Vernon would never play with me again. Isn’t it too delicious out there among the deodaras?’ ‘Heavenly,’ exclaimed Daphne; ‘and the river looks like the _chemin du Paradis_. I wonder you can stay in this glaring room.’ Sir Vernon had made up his mind by this time, and with a slow and gentle stroke, made a cannon and sent his adversary’s ball into a pocket. ‘Just like my luck,’ said the adversary, while Sir Vernon again deliberated.