Rupert stared gloomily across at him as he sat smiling and fumbling with
his cards. Many men who have good brains for business do not possess the
rudiments of a card-brain, and Rupert would not have judged and condemned
his prospective brother-in-law on the evidence of his bridge play alone.
The tragic part of it was that he smiled and fumbled through life just as
fatuously and apologetically as he did at the card-table. And behind the
defensive smile and the well-worn expressions of regret there shone a
scarcely believable but quite obvious self-satisfaction. Every sheep of
the pasture probably imagines that in an emergency it could become
terrible as an army with banners--one has only to watch how they stamp
their feet and stiffen their necks when a minor object of suspicion comes
into view and behaves meekly. And probably the majority of human sheep
see themselves in imagination taking great parts in the world's more
impressive dramas, forming swift, unerring decisions in moments of
crisis, cowing mutinies, allaying panics, brave, strong, simple, but, in
spite of their natural modesty, always slightly spectacular.
"Why in the name of all that is unnecessary and perverse should Kathleen
choose this man for her future husband?" was the question that Rupert
asked himself ruefully.
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