Suddenly she sprang to her feet--almost as suddenly as he had risen when in the midst of their little chat together; only the exclamation that she gave was not the same as his. Hers was derisive, contemptuous, impatient, and there was certainly something of impatience in her walk round the courts where play was going on. She had, however, recovered herself--she had walked herself outside the atmosphere, so to speak, of whatever thoughts had irritated her--before she had come opposite the court where Jack Wingfield was playing off the second set of the “Gentlemen’s Singles”; but even if she had not done so, a few minutes of watching the game that was in progress would certainly have cleared away any wisp of mist that might have remained with her on emerging from that atmosphere of conjecture into which she had allowed herself to stray. She slipped into the only unoccupied chair at this court. It was at the end of the third row of the seats at the side from which Jack Wingfield was serving. An elderly visitor, wearing a velvet hat built up like a pagoda, sat immediately in front of her, so that she ran no chance of being seen by him. This was what, she thought when she took the seat; but before being in it many seconds she could not help smiling at the thought of how ridiculous it was to fancy that her coming might divert his attention for a single moment from the game, to the detriment of his play. The scheme of Oriental architecture in front of her effectually hid every inch of the court and the players from her, but her seat being at the end of the row, she had only to move a few inches to one side to command a complete and perfect view of the whole; and she perceived in a moment that the man who was serving with his back to her and to the whole world and all that is therein, had become compressed into the spheroid which he held in his left hand preparatory to launching it like a thunderbolt with a twist over the net. She smiled. If the German Emperor or Mr. Roosevelt or some other commanding personality had suddenly appeared on the court, Jack Wingfield would have seen nothing of him. He had eyes only for the ball. But for the ball he surpassed Shelley’s night in the number of eyes that he had. He was playing against a very good man--a man who, according to some newspapers, had a very good chance of winning the cup that carried with it the title of Champion of South Saxony--but Priscilla saw in a moment how things were going. It seemed to her that it was not Jack Wingfield who was serving, but quite a different person. She could not imagine that desperately alert young man who served as if his whole future were dependent upon his placing the ball on the exact inch of ground at which he aimed--she could not imagine that this was the Jack Wingfield of the shrug--the Jack Wingfield who half an hour ago had been ready to scratch to the man whom he was now playing as if he had no object in life but his defeat.