After luncheon Tressilvain tried the billiards, but found the game inferior to the English game.  So he burrowed into a box of cigars, established himself before the fire with all the newspapers, deploring the fact that the papers were not worth reading.

Lady Tressilvain cornered Shiela and badgered her and stared at her until she dared not lift her hot face or open her lips lest the pent resentment escape; Portlaw smoked a pipe—­a sure indication of smouldering wrath; Malcourt, at a desk, blew clouds of smoke from his cigarette and smilingly continued writing to his attorney: 

   “This is the general idea for the document, and it’s up to you to
   fix it up and make it legal, and have it ready for me when I come
   to town.

“1st.  I want to leave all my property to a Miss Dorothy or Dolly Wilming; and I want you to sell off everything after my death and invest the proceeds for her because it’s all she’ll have to live on except what she gets by her own endeavours.  This, in case I suddenly snuff out.

   “2d.  I want to leave my English riding-crop, spurs, bridle, and
   saddle to a Miss Virginia Suydam.  Fix it legally.

   “3d.  Here is a list of eighteen ladies.  Each is to have one of my
   eighteen Chinese gods.

   “4th.  To my wife I leave the nineteenth god.  Mr. Hamil has it in
   his possession.  I have no right to dispose of it, but he will
   have some day.

   “5th.  To John Garret Hamil, 3d, I leave my volume of Jean DuMont,
   the same being an essay on Friendship.

   “6th.  To my friend, William Van Bueren Portlaw, I leave my dogs,
   rods, and guns with a recommendation that he use them and his
   legs.

“7th.  To my sister, Lady Tressilvain, I leave my book of comic
Bridge rules, and to her husband a volume of Methodist hymns.

“I’ll be in town again, shortly, and expect you to have my will
ready to be signed and witnessed.  One ought always to be
prepared, particularly when in excellent health.

“Yours sincerely,
“LOUIS MALCOURT.”

“P.S.  I enclose a check for the Greenlawn Cemetery people.  I wish you’d see that they keep the hedge properly trimmed around my father’s plot and renew the dead sod where needed.  I noticed that one of the trees was also dead.  Have them put in another and keep the flowers in good shape.  I don’t want anything dead around that lot.

“L.M.”

When he had sealed and directed his letter he looked around the silent room.  Shiela was sewing by the window.  Portlaw, back to the fire, stood staring out at the rain; Lady Tressilvain, a cigarette between her thin lips, wandered through the work-shop and loading-room where, from hooks in the ceiling, a thicket of split-cane rod-joints hung, each suspended by a single strong thread.

The loading-room was lined with glass-faced cases containing fowling-pieces, rifles, reels, and the inevitable cutlery and ironmongery associated with utensils for the murder of wild creatures.  Tressilvain sat at the loading-table to which he was screwing a delicate vise to hold hooks; for Malcourt had given him a lesson in fly-tying, and he meant to dress a dozen to try on Painted Creek.