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stared at her in evident surprise, she added as lightly as she could, "It just occurred to me—wouldn't you rather go in the back door, dearest? Then you could sneak up the back stairs to your room and you wouldn't have to see anybody. I know how you hate to have a lot of people 'glad-hand' you, as you call it. And I'll join you up there in just a few minutes for a nice quiet chat——"

"Who's all in there?" Jock interrupted. "Any females?"

"N-no——"

"Then come on, I don't mind."

He took her arm and led her indoors, wondering while he did so why she laughed, a little hysterically. . . .

The last car droned down the drive and away into the reddening sunrise. Jock, at a window, watched it until it disappeared; after that he watched the place where it had been. From somewhere in the room behind him he could hear small sounds, significant. . . . Chips racketing into their boxes. Glasses clinking together on a tray. Voices, his mother's, Bennett's, the croupiers', business-like but oddly far off "Over a thousand." The scrape of chairs. The tiny whimper of a wall safe swinging open on its hinges, swinging shut again. Then receding footsteps. Then silence. . . .

And then, ever so sweetly, "Jock."

He left the window and confronted his mother.

"Ooh!" she said. "Don't look so cross, lover! Do you want to scare me to death?"