The desperate suspense, the anguish of jeopardy, continued, and at length Geraldine had but one card left, Colonel Ashley holding two; the other players having matched and tabled the rest of the pack were now out of the game. Seeing how seriously the doom of spinsterhood was regarded, Colonel Ashley sought to prevent his little neighbor from drawing the fateful pasteboard by craftily shifting the cards in his hand as she was about to take hold of the grim-visaged queen. Geraldine detected the motion instantly, with deep suspicion misinterpreted his intention, and laid hold on the card he had manoeuvred to retain. Her crestfallen dismay betrayed the disaster. With wide, fearfully prescient eyes she nevertheless gathered all her faculties for the final effort. Cautiously holding her two cards under the table, she shifted them, interchanged them back and forth, then tremulously permitted him to draw. This done, he placidly placed two fives on the table. There was a moment of impressive silence while the "lady" held before her eyes in her babyish fingers the single card, and gazed petrified on the Medusa-like visage of the Old Maid. Then, as a murmur of awe arose from the other "ladies," looking pityingly upon her, yet blissful in their own escape, she burst into tears, and, bowing her golden head in her arms on the table, wept copiously, though softly, silently, mindful that Cousin Leonora allowed no "loud whooping in weeps," her little shoulders shaken by her sobs. Colonel Ashley could but laugh as he protested, "This is truly flattering to masculine vanity." Then, his kindly impulses uppermost, "Come, Miss Geraldine, let's have another round. There must be more Old Maids still hiding out in this crowd. Let's see who they are." Adelaide looked alarmed as the stricken one lifted her head to the prospect of the company that misery loves. "I wish I was like Cousin Leonora, born a widow-woman," she remarked, regarding the doubtful future askance. "Widow-womans can marry,--Aunt Chaney says they can," Geraldine declared, as she took up the cards of the new deal. "Well, you would speak more properer if you said 'widow-_womens_' than 'widow-_womans_,'" rejoined the critical Adelaide, rendered tart by her renewed jeopardy and the sudden termination of the definite sense of escape. While each player's hand was full of cards, the three queens still amongst them, the interest was not so tense as the first few draws went round and Mrs. Gwynn's entrance from the dining room created some stir. Baynell and Ashley rose to offer her a chair, and the latter proposed to deal her a hand in the game. "Not this round," she returned, "as the game has already commenced. Besides, I am quite chilly. I shall sit by the fire and read the evening paper until you play out the hand."