Thus, Judge Wicklow, Mrs. Rivett, and Mrs. Lorrimore played Chinese Kahn under the terrace awning; Colonel Follis Curmew, who had been rash enough to discard his coat and reveal an unlooked-for excess of abdomen, played tennis with Silvette against Jack Rivett and Mrs. Wemyss; Mr. Rivett and Mr. Snaith indulged in laborious clock golf and talked of oil; and Christine and Edgerton, down by the river’s edge, continued a conversation begun the evening previous, and which was near enough to meaning something to stimulate their attention. From his clock golf on the lawn above, Mr. Rivett turned his convex glasses on them occasionally; from one card table on the terrace, her mother, drawing the white wool shawl closer around her slight shoulders, watched her daughter from moment to moment. Later, the game ended, Mrs. Lorrimore victorious, and his honor unusually peevish. Mrs. Rivett rose and, advancing to the terrace edge, gazed down at the river bank, where her daughter and Edgerton still sat in the floating canoe, holding it inshore by grasping willow branches overhead. For a few moments the little old lady watched them, one hand gathering the fleece shawl over the magnificent sapphire at her breast; then she turned quietly away into the house, wandering through it from one gorgeous room to another, until at last she came to the high organ. Here her husband found her in the semi-dusk, sitting motionless and silent under the tall pipes, hands folded in her lap. "Well, mother?" he said in a voice which nobody else ever had the privilege of listening to. She lifted her head, smiled, and laid one hand over his as he seated himself beside her in the demi-twilight. "Are you happy?" he asked, patting the worn fingers. "Yes, Jacob—when you and the children are." "Does that damn Sims bother you?" No, the housekeeper did not bother her; neither did Noonan, general superintendent. "Are you sure you are feeling perfectly well?" "Yes, dear." "And you are enjoying the people?" "Yes.... The Tennant girls are so kind to me." "Why the devil shouldn’t they be?" he said harshly. "They never met a better woman!" "Jacob, dear, don’t speak that way." "Well, then—don’t be so eternally surprised if people are nice to you, mother. They’d better be!" She smiled. "I am a rather plain and unattractive old woman to young people—to most people. I have little to say, but Diana Tennant and her sister are very sweet to me. Poor, motherless girls! I wonder—it troubles me—sometimes—a great deal——" "What?" he asked grimly. "Their being so entirely alone, and so unusually attractive.... And they’re _good_ girls, Jacob." "I assume that they are," he said dryly. "They _are_; a woman knows at once.... They’ve made everybody—all our guests—enjoy their visits so much. Don’t you think so?" "They’ve earned their salaries.... People seem to like ’em.... I’m wondering how much Jack likes the younger one—Silvette." "Have _you_ thought so, too?"