Perhaps it was because he hated the sight of a good-looking man near Miss Davison that Gerard took an instinctive and strong dislike to this Denver Van Santen, and told himself that the fellow was ill-mannered, presumptuous, and “bad-form” altogether. On the other side of Miss Davison was an Englishman, a young baronet, who was already making himself conspicuous by the rapidity with which he was dissipating the fortune which he had recently inherited with the title. Gerard, uneasily glancing from the one to the other, and from these three to the groups of gay visitors who were laughing and talking around them, wondered what sort of position the rest of the guests held, and whether there were many present of the type represented by the spendthrift young baronet. There were two or three racing ladies, women of birth and position, whose rank enabled them to go fearlessly wherever they fancied, without calling down upon themselves the decree of banishment which lesser mortals can only avoid by extreme discretion. Gerard wondered whether the ladies he saw were all of that venturesome type, and whether it was considered rather a daring thing to visit these bridge-playing Americans in the snug retreat they had chosen for themselves. Meanwhile Miss Davison had been brought to the group under the lime trees, and placed in a comfortable chair, and waited upon assiduously by the two young men who had accompanied her from the house. Sir William Gurdon, the young baronet, was complaining of his ill-luck at poker. Denver Van Santen laughed at him. “Wants a cool head--poker,” he remarked; “and to keep your mind on what you’re doing. That Cora and her singing were enough to distract anybody. We’ll get farther away from the music this evening, if we play any more.” “Yes,” assented Sir William. “I should awfully like to play again, but I don’t want to make such a duffer of myself as I did this afternoon.” “I don’t think you’re cut out for a poker-player. If I were you I should give it up,” said Denver, in a decided tone. Sir William resented this as an imputation that he was not cool-headed. “I don’t know why you should say that,” he said rather sharply. “I suppose poker has to be learned like everything else, and probably you play it better now than when you first began.” Denver shook his head modestly. “Not always,” he said; “sometimes I’m an arrant duffer at it. Why the other day I was cleaned out, absolutely cleaned out, by a fellow who hadn’t played half a dozen times in his life. I _did_ feel a fool, I can tell you!” “You shall try again with me this evening,” said the baronet. “I’m not going to be beaten without a struggle, at that or at anything else.” Denver, however, tried to dissuade him.