The Lighted Match

At dinner the talk ran for a course or two with the hounds, then strayed

aimlessly into a dozen discursive channels.

"My boy," whispered Mrs. Van from her end of the table, to Pagratide on

her right, "I relinquish you to the girl on your other side. You have

made a very brave effort to talk to me. Ah, I know--" raising a slender

hand to still his polite remonstrance--"there is no Cara but Cara, and

Pagratide is--" She let her mischief-laden smile finish the comment.

"Her satellite," he confessed.

"One of them," she wickedly corrected him.

The foreigner turned his head and nodded gravely. Cara was listening to

something that Benton was saying in undertone, her lips parted in an

amused smile.

Through a momentary lull as the coffee came, rose the voice of

O'Barreton, the bore, near the head of the table; O'Barreton, who must

be tolerated because as a master of hounds he had no superior and a bare

quorum of equals.

"For my part," he was saying, "I confess an augmented admiration for

Van because he's distantly related to near-royalty. If that be snobbish,

make the most of it."

Van laughed. "Related to royalty?" he scornfully repeated. "Am I not

myself a sovereign with the right on election day to stand in line

behind my chauffeur and stable-boys at the voting-place?"

"How did it happen, Van? How did you acquire your gorgeous relatives?"

persisted O'Barreton.

"Some day I'll tell you all about it. Do you think the Elkridge hounds

will run--"

"I addressed a question to you. That question is still before the

house," interrupted O'Barreton, with dignity. "How did you acquire 'em?"

"Inherited 'em!" snapped Van, but O'Barreton was not to be turned aside.

"Quite true and quite epigrammatic," he persisted sweetly. "But how?"

Van turned to the rest of the table. "You don't have to listen to this,"

he said in despair. "I have to go through it with O'Barreton every time

he comes here. It's a sort of ritual." Then, turning to the tormenting

guest, he explained carefully: "Once upon a time the Earl of Dundredge

had three daughters. The eldest--my mother--married an American husband.

The second married an Englishman--she is the mother of my fair cousin,

Cara, there; the third and youngest married the third son of the Grand

Duke of Maritzburg, at that time a quiet gentleman who loved the Champs

Elysées and landscape-painting in Southern Spain."