The other four played on solemnly. The Father sat himself down behind Mrs. Satterthwaite, his chin in the nape of her neck. At excruciating moments he gripped her shoulders, exclaimed: "Play the _queen_, woman!" and breathed hard down her back. Mrs. Satterthwaite would play the two of diamonds, and the Father, throwing himself back, would groan. She said over her shoulder: "I want to talk to you to-night, Father," took the last trick of the rubber, collected 17 marks 50 from the doctor and 8 marks from the unter-leutenant. The doctor exclaimed: "You gan't dake that immense sum from us and then ko off. Now we shall be ropped py Herr Payliss at gutt-throat!" She drifted, all shadowy black silk, across the shadows of the dining-hall, dropping her winnings into her black satin vanity bag and attended by the priest. Outside the door, beneath the antlers of a royal stag, in an atmosphere of paraffin lamps and varnished pitch-pine, she said: "Come up to my sitting-room. The prodigal's returned. Sylvia's here." The Father said: "I thought I saw her out of the corner of my eye in the 'bus after dinner. She'll be going back to her husband. It's a poor world." "She's a wicked devil!" Mrs. Satterthwaite said. "I've known her myself since she was nine," Father Consett said, "and it's little I've seen in her to hold up to the commendation of my flock." He added: "But maybe I'm made unjust by the shock of it." They climbed the stairs slowly. Mrs. Satterthwaite sat herself on the edge of a cane chair. She said: "Well!" She wore a black hat like a cart-wheel and her dresses appeared always to consist of a great many squares of silk that might have been thrown on to her. Since she considered that her complexion, which was mat white, had gone slightly violet from twenty years of make up, when she was not made up--as she never was at Lobscheid--she wore bits of puce-coloured satin ribbon stuck here and there, partly to counteract the violet of her complexion, partly to show she was not in mourning. She was very tall and extremely emaciated; her dark eyes that had beneath them dark brown thumb-marks were very tired or very indifferent by turns.