That was why she stopped him so quickly when he was going to say something that would have spoilt his chance--and hers.
"Your heart is set on my visit to your mother--at least I hope so, for mine is," she cried quickly, with a nod to him. "Now tell me how and when I am to come." For a moment he felt angry that she had checked his all too rapid flow of words; he was not quite sure that the trend of their conversation, and that accidental introduction of a word or two that gives a man his opportunity, if only he is on the look out for it, would ever be so favourable to him again. But he quickly perceived that he had been too impetuous, and that if he had been allowed to go on he would have ruined every chance that he had.
"May I say Saturday?" he asked. "This business"--they were close to the tennis courts, and had just arisen from lunch--"will be over by Saturday."
"And you'll have carried home the cup--don't forget that," she said. "Yes, Saturday would suit me very well, and I hope it will suit your mother."
"You may be sure that it will," he said. "I have a very good chance of the cup, haven't I? There are only two lives between me and it. If Donovan is killed by a thunderbolt to-night and if a brigand stabs Jeffares with a poisoned stiletto in the course of the evening, to-morrow I'll carry off the cup. It will be plain sailing after that."
"Wish me good luck, and--I suppose you don't happen to have about you that ring which you habitually wear--the one with the monogram of Lucrezia Borgia done on it in fine rubies, and the secret spring that releases the hollow needle-point with the deadly fluid? No? Ah, just my luck! you could put it on and then offer your hand to Donovan."
"I have left it at the chemists to be renewed," she said, turning halfway round in speaking, for they were in the act of separating. "Yes, I have used up a lot of the fluid of late; I really must be more economical. If I'm not I'll not have enough money left to get it recharged for Miss Metcalfe, who lost you the M.D.s." And so they parted with smiles and fun.
And it so happened that he carried off the silver cup, for he beat Mr. Donovan the next day, and Mr. Jeffares, the holder, found that he had strained a tendon on the Saturday morning, and so declined to contest it and also Mr. Wingfield's offer to play for it when the tendon should be in working order. (There were some people who said that it was very sporting of Mr. Wingfield to make such an offer, and others that it was very sporting of Mr. Jeffares to decline entertaining it. But in the inner circle there were whispers that Mr. Jeffares' tendon was a most accommodating one, for it had been known to strain itself upon two previous occasions when he had to meet an opponent who was likely to give him some trouble.)