The Colonel was in rather an _exalté_ mood that afternoon, and just as his bluff heartiness was a shade more pronounced than usual, so, too, were his immoderate remarks when his partner did not play his hand correctly.
“Bumble-puppy, the merest bumble-puppy,” he roared. “It’s a pure waste of time playing a game like this, and to call it whist is a profanation. Ah, we got the odd, did we? I thought you had secured it. You ought to have. That puts us out. Well, well, as we are out I’ll say no more about it, but we ought never to have got out. It’s the principle of the thing for which I go.”
A few minutes later the door opened and Arthur entered. The Colonel was sorting his hand with angry snorts and growls and did not notice his entrance. Arthur took a seat near the table where the Colonel and his party were playing, and watched the game.
The Colonel finished sorting his hand first, and was not apparently satisfied with it, for he burst into a torrent of angry recrimination.
“A waiting game; is this what they call a waiting game? Really, partner, you seem to fall asleep upon your cards. And there are other gentlemen waiting here to take a hand.” And he turned an inflamed face upon Arthur.
There was dead silence. If the Colonel had seen the ghost of his late noble relative he could not have been more shocked. Only a few minutes before he had been talking of his afternoon with his cousins in Bolton Street, and here was one of them, to whom he had never spoken, at his elbow. Arthur seldom went to the club, and, as luck would have it, he and the Colonel had not met before. The Colonel knew Arthur by sight, but the mischief was that Arthur did not know the Colonel. The man of war was up a tree, and his old cronies knew it. But he faced the position like a volunteer.
“Charming little place you have in Bolton Street,” he said, without fury in his voice. “I was there this afternoon paying my respects to Miss Avesham and Miss Fortescue--I and my wife. We claim connection with you through the Fortescues. Ah, my partner has played. A good card, sir, a very good card.”
Arthur glanced at the Colonel, then at the other players. They all exhibited an unnatural absorption in their cards, and he guessed that this connection of his, whoever he might be, was in a tight place. He waited till the hand was over, which concluded the rubber.