"Do not press me to answer you," she said. "You postpone your answer!" "Please." * * * * * Meantime dusk had begun to fall, the sounds of rejoicing Cockneys came more faintly from the river, the glow in the western sky faded into saffron, and overhead the vault of velvet blue grew infinitely more infinite. Birds chuckled and scurried through the bushes, bats extended angled wings for the preliminary trials of their nameless ghoulish errands, a nightingale bubbled suddenly, and a large yellow star swung into sight over the dim edge of the earth. But the lawn itself, save for a fine carpet of dew, that was spread without hands on the close-napped turf, reflected none of the evening influences. Servants hurried noiselessly about lighting the lamps that hung in the trees, and soon the tents where dinner was laid began to shimmer with white linen and gleam with silver. Jack was back from his golf, and Mrs. Brereton from an extremely short walk (for she had been recommended plenty of exercise), a few people had left to dine in town, but more people arrived from town to dine here, and Andrew Brereton, having succeeded in wresting four shillings and sixpence from the reluctant Mr. Maxwell, felt that he had earned his dinner. And as night became deeper, the animation of the party grew louder and their laughter more frequent; the moon and the stars everlastingly set in heaven were to them but the whitewash of the ceiling of the rooms where they dined, the trees and infinite soft spaces of the dusk but the paper on the walls of their restaurant, the miracle of the dewy lawn a carpet for unheeding feet. Wine and food concerned them perhaps most, but in a place hardly inferior must have been put the charms of screaming and scandalous conversation. Dinner, in fact, was a great success. By midnight all the guests for the day who were not staying over the Sunday had left, and the stables, which had been a packed mass of broughams, victorias, dogcarts, motor-cars, and bicycles, were once more empty; and Lady Ardingly, whose rubber had most unjustifiably been interrupted by Mrs. Brereton's adieus to her guests, picked up her hand again with some acidity. "Now, perhaps, we shall get on with our Bridge," she said. "I have declared no trumps. Nobody doubles! That is a very masterly inactivity on our adversaries' part."