" After dinner the company withdrew to the
brilliantly lighted drawing-room, where conversation, music, and a
few games of cards for such as liked them, filled up a couple of
hours longer.
The Lady de Tilly, seated beside Pierre Philibert on the sofa,
conversed with him in a pleasant strain, while the Cure, with a
couple of old dowagers in turbans, and an old veteran officer of the
colonial marine, long stranded on a lee shore, formed a quartette at
cards.
These were steady enthusiasts of whist and piquet, such as are only
to be found in small country circles where society is scarce and
amusements few. They had met as partners or antagonists, and
played, laughed, and wrangled over sixpenny stakes and odd tricks
and honors, every week for a quarter of a century, and would
willingly have gone on playing till the day of judgment without a
change of partners if they could have trumped death and won the odd
trick of him.
Pierre recollected having seen these same old friends seated at the
same card-table during his earliest visits to the Manor House.
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