“Now you are a deal better arranged, and the game will go faster; there will be no cheating,” Joan said. She did not care a bit for being called rude. Raaf Selby should know that he was not good enough for a Joscelyn whatever his cousin might be. “One’s enough,” she said to herself. Besides, she wanted for Liddy something that should be out of the common altogether. She herself had done very well in marriage. She had got an excellent man, with enough to be comfortable upon. But she did not feel that she would be satisfied with only so much for her little sister. Not that Raaf Selby at his best could hold a candle to Phil. He was not much except when he was on a horse; then she was obliged to allow he looked pretty well. But a man can’t always be on a horse’s back, and anywhere else he was not worth looking twice at; very different from Phil. Even Phil, however, much as she respected her husband, was not the kind of person she wanted for Liddy. A fairy prince, if any such fantastic being had ever existed in Joan’s steady imagination, was the sort of person who ought to be Lydia’s fate; a fine young fellow (young to start with), and handsome, and well off, and with an air above the rest of the world. Unawares, as her eyes went round her guests, they fell once more upon the tall young stranger behind Mrs. Pilgrim’s chair. Was that the kind of man? Well, if he had not been an intruder, a stranger, a hanger-on of the Pilgrims’ (though certainly not in love with either of the girls), that was the kind of person. She drew near Mrs. Pilgrim as this unsolicited thought arose in her mind. She was annoyed with herself to think that a person whom she did not know, and who had no right to be here, should thus have taken her eye. “You are doing nothing, Amy,” she said to the eldest Miss Pilgrim; “I’m sure they want you in the game yonder--or you might give us some music. You and your sister might play a duet. I like to see everybody employed.” “That is what I always say. You don’t let the grass grow beneath your feet, Mrs. Selby, neither in work nor in pleasure. I was just saying to----” here she made signs with her thumb, pointing to the stranger, who was inspecting the party from his eminence, and talking languidly to one of the girls. “He was introduced to you,” she added, in a whisper, “when he came in?” “I should think,” said Joan, “that nobody would bring a strange man into my house without introducing him to me. But your friend is doing nothing either,” she said, with compunction, and a relenting of hospitality. “He has just got into a corner; and the evening’s lost when you once do that.” “Oh, Mrs. Selby, he doesn’t know anybody. We promised we would take care of him if he came with us,” Amy Pilgrim said; and the object of Joan’s mingled interest and indignation laughed a little, and said that he hoped Mrs. Selby would not trouble herself, that he was very well there.