Two worse players never probably sat down to a game. Anne’s attention perpetually wandered; and Anne’s companion was, in all human probability, the most incapable card-player in Europe.
Anne turned up the trump--the nine of Diamonds. Arnold looked at his hand--and “proposed.” Anne declined to change the cards. Arnold announced, with undiminished good-humor, that he saw his way clearly, now, to losing the game, and then played his first card--the Queen of Trumps!
Anne took it with the King, and forgot to declare the King. She played the ten of Trumps.
Arnold unexpectedly discovered the eight of Trumps in his hand. “What a pity!” he said, as he played it. “Hullo! you haven’t marked the King! I’ll do it for you. That’s two--no, three--to you. I said I should lose the game. Couldn’t be expected to do any thing (could I?) with such a hand as mine. I’ve lost every thing now I’ve lost my trumps. You to play.”
Anne looked at her hand. At the same moment the lightning flashed into the room through the ill-closed shutters; the roar of the thunder burst over the house, and shook it to its foundation. The screaming of some hysterical female tourist, and the barking of a dog, rose shrill from the upper floor of the inn. Anne’s nerves could support it no longer. She flung her cards on the table, and sprang to her feet.
“I can play no more,” she said. “Forgive me--I am quite unequal to it. My head burns! my heart stifles me!”
She began to pace the room again. Aggravated by the effect of the storm on her nerves, her first vague distrust of the false position into which she and Arnold had allowed themselves to drift had strengthened, by this time, into a downright horror of their situation which was not to be endured. Nothing could justify such a risk as the risk they were now running! They had dined together like married people--and there they were, at that moment, shut in together, and passing the evening like man and wife!
“Oh, Mr. Brinkworth!” she pleaded. “Think--for Blanche’s sake, think--is there no way out of this?”
Arnold was quietly collecting the scattered cards.
“Blanche, again?” he said, with the most exasperating composure. “I wonder how she feels, in this storm?”
In Anne’s excited state, the reply almost maddened her. She turned from Arnold, and hurried to the door.