THE COUNTRY-HOUSE PARTY
In the smoking-room of Dean Manor the guests were sitting in silence, the comfortable after-dinner quiet so blessed in its restfulness. Patrick Davison, standing before the fire, surveyed them with a kindly eye. Macarthy, Hayden, Macdonald, West, and Steward, five of his old friends, lying back in their chairs looking content, and watching with careless gaze the smoke curling upward from their pipes. His eyes travelled to the two women present, pretty Mrs. Barnes, shading her face from the flames with a pink fan, and Deborah Hayden, the only active person in the room, who sat writing by the soft light of a lamp near the window. On the whole it seemed to Davison that they helped the picture of happy idleness. He smiled at a thought, for of all of them, Deborah Hayden, he knew, thought herself the one who had no time for idleness.
