The next moment the little table on which Peter was playing toppled over onto the floor with a small crash, and all his cards were scattered on the carpet.

Rhoda started and looked round, pulling her hand away as if a spell was broken.

“Dear me,” said Peter regretfully, “it was just on coming out, too.  I shan’t try again to-night; it’s not my night, obviously.”  He was picking up the cards.  Rhoda watched him silently.

“Do you know calcul, Mr. Vyvian?” Peter enquired, collecting scattered portions of the pack from under the arm-chair.

Mr. Vyvian stared at Peter’s back, which was the part of him most visible at the moment.

“I really can’t say I have the pleasure; no.” (That, Peter felt certain, was an insolent drawl.)

“Would you like to learn it?” said Peter politely.  “Are you fond of patience?”

“I can’t say I am,” said Mr. Vyvian.

“Oh!  Then you would like calcul.  People who are really fond of other patiences don’t; they despise it because it comes out.  I don’t like any other sort of patience; I’m not clever enough; so I like this.  Let me teach you, may I?”

Vyvian got up.

“Thanks; you’re quite too kind.  On the whole, I think I can conduct my life without any form of patience, even one which comes out.”

“You have a turn, then, Miss Johnson,” said Peter, arranging the cards.  “Perhaps it’ll come out for you, though it won’t for me to-night.”

“Since you are all so profitably occupied,” said Vyvian, “I think I will say good night.”

Peter said, “Oh, must you?...  Good night, then.  We play calcul most nights, so you can learn it some other time if you’d like to.”

“A delightful prospect,” Vyvian murmured, his glance again comprehensively wandering round the room.  “A happy family party you seem here....  Good night.”  He bent over Rhoda with his ironic politeness.

“I was going to ask you if you would come out with me to-morrow evening to a theatre....  But since your evenings seem to be so pleasantly filled otherwise....”

She looked up at him a moment, wavered, met his dark eyes, was caught by the old domination, and swept off her feet as of old.

“Oh, ...  I should like to come....”  She was a little breathless.

“Good!  I will call for you then, at seven, and we will dine together.  Au revoir.”

“He swept her a mocking bow and was gone,” Peter murmured to himself.

Then he looked at Rhoda, and found her eyes upon his face, wide, frightened, bewildered, and knew in a flash that she had never meant to consent to go out with Vyvian, that she had been caught by the old power he had over her and swept off her feet.  That knowledge gave him confidence, and he could say, “You don’t want to go, do you?  Let me go after him and tell him.”

“Oh,” she pressed her hands together in front of her.  “But I must go—­I said I would.”