“Those are nice tricks, aren’t they?” asked Malcourt, smiling.

“Y-yes.  Lord!  Louis, I never dreamed you could do such devilish things as—­”

“I can.  If I were not always behind you in my score I’d scarcely dare let you know what I might do if I chose....  How far ahead is that little mink, yonder?”

“Tressilvain?”

“Yes.”

“He has taken about a thousand—­wait!” Portlaw consulted his note-book, made a wry face, and gave Malcourt the exact total.

Malcourt turned carelessly in his chair.

“O Herbert!” he called across to his brother-in-law; “don’t you and Helen want to take us on?”

“Rather!” replied Tressilvain briskly; and came trotting across the room, his close-set black eyes moving restlessly from Malcourt to Portlaw.

“Come on, Helen,” said Malcourt, drawing up a chair for her; and his sister seated herself gracefully.  A moment later the game began, Portlaw passing it over to Malcourt, who made it no trumps, and laid out all the materials for international trouble, including a hundred aces.

The games were brutally short, savage, decisive; Tressilvain lost countenance after the fastest four rubbers he had ever played, and shot an exasperated glance at his wife, who was staring thoughtfully at her brother.

But that young man appeared to be in an innocently merry mood; he gaily taunted Herby, as he chose to call him, with loss of nerve; he tormented his sister because she didn’t seem to know what Portlaw’s discards meant; and no wonder, because he discarded from an obscure system taught him by Malcourt.  Also, with a malice which Tressilvain ignored, he forced formalities, holding everybody ruthlessly to iron-clad rule, taking penalties, enforcing the most rigid etiquette.  For he was one of those rare players who knew the game so thoroughly that while he, and the man he had taught, often ignored the classics of adversary play, the slightest relaxing of etiquette, rule, precept, or precedent, in his opponents, brought him out with a protest exacting the last item of toll for indiscretion.

Portlaw was perhaps the sounder player, Malcourt certainly the more brilliant; and now, for the first time since the advent of the Tressilvains, the cards Portlaw held were good ones.

“What a nasty thing to do!” said Lady Tressilvain sharply, as her brother’s finesse went through, and with it another rubber.

“It was horrid, wasn’t it, Helen?  I don’t know what’s got into you and Herby”; and to the latter’s protest he added pleasantly:  “You talk like a bucket of ashes.  Go on and deal!”

“A—­what!” demanded Tressilvain angrily.

“It’s an Americanism,” observed his wife, surveying her cards with masked displeasure and making it spades.  “Louis, I never held such hands in all my life,” she said, displaying the meagre dummy.

“Do you good, Helen.  Mustn’t be too proud and haughty.  No, no!  Good for you and Herby—­”