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no recollection of reading Lord Monstuart’s name in the journals.
    “The details escape me,”he answered evasively. “It was some years ago. We occasionally met afterward for a game of cards or chess.”
    “Papa was a great chess player.”
    “Do you play?”
    “Very little.”
    “The country offers so few entertainments. I wonder if you might be induced to give me a game,”he suggested. He looked toward the lovers in the corner, and the mama, and stifled a yawn behind his fingers.
    It was Monstuart’s intention to remain as long as Derwent, and Miss Hermitage had already guessed as much. She rose to get the board and assemble the pieces. Watching her glide across the room, he found her as admirable a sight from the rear as from any other angle.
    Sally began to set up the chessboard, but she had not played in several years and was unsure where to place the various pieces. Holding a carved ivory queen, she let her fingers hover above the squares, catching her lower lip between her teeth. He studied the white hands with the delicate pink nails, then the little rounded white teeth, and said not a word as she put every piece save the pawns in the wrong squares. When the job was done, he rapidly shuffled them around to the conventional positions, without a word.
    “I haven’t played in an age,”she admitted.
    “I assumed as much,”he replied, but didn’t offer to call off the game. She would have preferred conversation, during which she hoped to score him off for calling them ladybirds.
    Monstuart started off with a conventional opening; it was the only conventional move made during the game. Miss Hermitage had obviously not the least notion what she was about. Bishops were hopped like knights, knights shoved straight forward or diagonally, and even a pawn was endowed with the power of taking three or four squares at a leap. She was a wretched player, but such an entrancing one to watch that he went on for some minutes without saying a word. He watched her fluttering hands, and her face tensed in willful concentration as she tried vainly to remember the route her chosen piece should take.
    “Tell me,”he said a while later, “are we playing chess, or hopscotch?”
    “I think you are playing chess and I am playing hopscotch,”she confessed, “and it is a pity we are playing our separate games on the same board. Truth to tell, I haven’t the foggiest notion what I’m doing.”
    “In that case, you are doing it extremely well. I can’t believe the Hermit’s daughter is so dull she can’t master the moves. Shall I refresh your memory a little? The queen can go ...”He went on to explain the rudiments.
    “It’s much too confusing. Let us play piquet instead,”Sally suggested, throwing up her hands.
    “No, no! You give up too easily. It will be an excellent diversion for you, here in the country, with many a long evening to kill.”He glanced at his watch and at his nephew, but there was no sign of Derwent leaving yet, so they continued their confusing game of chess, till, at length Monstuart rose and said peremptorily to his nephew that it was getting late.
    Derwent felt his uncle was coming around, and with a squeeze of his intended’s fingers and a smile that promised future bliss, he was torn away. The three ladies sat around the fire later, asking one another what the second visit from Monstuart augured.
    “He was much more civil than he was this morning,”Mrs. Hermitage said hopefully. “He apologized for what he said earlier—on the way out, you know, he murmured something to that effect. An apology does not come easily to him.”
    “He also said he and Derwent had come to take their leave,”Sally reminded them.
    “Derwent is coming back tomorrow.”Melanie smiled.
    “If Monstuart lets him,”Sally added.
    “As to that,”Mrs. Hermitage said with a coy look at her elder daughter, “I think you handled him very wisely, Sal.”
    “I didn’t ‘handle’him at all. He has no idea of