"You make all who inhabit this house happy," said Mrs. Ollnee. "I can hear spirit laughter echoing to yours." "Can you? Is it Margaret?" "Yes, Margaret and Philip." Victor did not smile; on the contrary, his face darkened, and Mrs. Joyce changed the tone of the conversation by asking: "Did you see the paper this morning? They say you have skipped to join Pettus." This seemed so funny that they all laughed, till Victor remembered that both these women had lost much money through Pettus. Mrs. Joyce sobered, too. "The Star is against you, Lucy, and you must keep dark for a time. They are denouncing you as a traitor and all the rest of it. Did Paul, or any one, advise you last night?" "No, nothing was said. I suppose they are considering the matter also. Those deceiving spirits must be hunted out and driven away." "I'm going to lie down for a while," Mrs. Joyce announced. "My old waist-line is jolted a bit out o' plumb. Leo, will you stretch out, too?" "No indeed. What I need is a walk or a game of tennis. I'm cramped from sitting so long." So it fell out that Victor (penniless youth, hedged about with invisible walls, pikes, and pitfalls) was soon galloping about a tennis court in the glories of a new pair of flannel trousers and a lovely blue-striped outing shirt, trying hard not to win every game from a very good partner, who was pouting with dismay while admiring his skill. "It isn't right for any one to 'serve' as weird a ball as you do," she protested. "It's like playing with loaded dice. I begin to understand why you were not renowned as a scholar." "Oh, I wasn't so bad! I stood above medium." "How could you? It must have taken all your time to learn to play tennis in the diabolical way you do--it's conjury, that's what it is!" They were in the shade, and the fresh sweet wind, heavy with the scent of growing corn and wheat, swept steadily over the court, relieving it from heat, and Victor clean forgot his worriments. This girlish figure filled his eyes with pictures of unforgetable grace and charm. The swing of her skirts as she leaped for the ball, the free sweep of her arm (she had been well instructed), and the lithe bending of her waist brought the lover's sweet unease. When they came to the net now and again, he studied her fine figure with frank admiration. "You are a corker!" was his boyish word of praise. "I don't go up against many men who play the game as well as you do. Your 'form' is a whole lot better than mine. I am a bit lucky, I admit. You see, I studied baseball pitching, and I know the action of a whirling sphere. I curve the ball--make it 'break,' as the English say. I can make it do all kinds of 'stunts.'" "I see you can, and I'll thank you not to try any new ones," she protested. "Can you ride a horse?" His face fell a bit. "There I am a 'mutt,'" he confessed. "I never was on a horse except the wooden one in the Gym."