St. John has been rather unlucky in his experiences of women hitherto. He has got rather into the habit of thinking that all good women must be stupid, and that all pleasant women must be bad. Esther is not stupid. Is she bad, then? Those glances of hers, they give a man odd sensations about the midriff; they inspire in him a greedy, covetous desire for more of them; but are they such as Una would have given her Red Cross Knight? Are they such as a man would like to see his wife bestow on his men friends? The wilder a man is or has been himself, the more scrupulously fastidious he is about the almost prudish nicety of the women that belong to him. He likes to see the sheep and the goats as plainly, widely separated as they are in the parable; it moves him to deep wrath when he sees a good woman faintly, poorly imitating a bad one. I do not think that good women believe this half generally enough; or, if they do, they do not act upon it. "Do they play every evening?" "Every evening, and Sir Thomas always accuses my mother of cheating." "And you, what do you do?" "Read, go to sleep, play cribbage or bézique with Conny." "Does she live here always?" "Always." "You and she are inseparable, I suppose?" "We get on very well in a quiet way; she is a very good girl, and comes and sits in my smoking-room by the hour with me." "Wrong, but pleasant, as the monkey said when he kissed the cat," remarks Esther, flippantly. "You are very fond of her, I suppose?" "H'm!" shrugging his shoulders. "I have a cat-like propensity for getting fond of anything that I live and eat and breathe with--like the fellow in the Bastille, don't you know, that got so fond of a spider. I never should have grown fond of a spider, though; they have got such a monstrous lot of long legs; but the principle is the same." "Why are not you fond of Sir Thomas then?" "So I am, I suppose, _in a way;_ if he were to tumble into the pool, I suppose I should hop in and fish him out again; I'm not quite sure about that, either." "We'll have another rubber, miladi?" shouts Sir Thomas's stentor voice, elate with victory; "that is the ninth game I have beat you to-night; you'll never win as long as you leave so many blots--I have told you so a score of times." Poor miladi, strangling a gigantic yawn, begins to set her men again; she had hoped that her punishment was ended for the night, and that she might be dismissed to the _otium cum dignitate_ of her armchair and nap. St. John jumps up and walks over to the players; there are few things in life he hates so much as playing backgammon with his father, but he hates seeing his mother bullied even more. If a man is cursed with a necessity for loving something, the chances are that he will love his mother, even if she bear more resemblance to a porpoise than to a Christian lady. "I'll have a rubber with you, Sir Thomas; my mother is tired."