Mapp knew she had revoked and squeezed her brains to think how she could possibly dispose of the card, while there was a certain calmness about the Padre, which but too clearly indicated[43] that he was quite content to wait for the inevitable disclosure. This came at the last trick, and though Miss Mapp made one forlorn attempt to thrust the horrible little clubby underneath the other cards and gather them up, the Padre pounced on it.

[43]

“What ho, fair lady!” he said, now completely restored. “Methinks thou art forsworn! Let me have a keek at the last trick but three! Verily I wis that thou didst trump ye club aforetime. I said so; there it is. Eh, that’s bonny for us, partner!”

Miss Mapp, of course, denied it all, and a ruthless reconstruction of the tricks took place. The Major, still busy with red-currant fool, was the last to grasp the disaster, and then instantly deplored the unsportsmanlike greed of his adversaries.

“Well, I should have thought in a friendly game like this——” he said. “Of course, you’re within your right, Bartlett: might is right, hey? but upon my word, a pound of flesh, you know… Can’t think what made you do it, partner.”

“You never asked me if I had any more clubs,” said Miss Mapp shrilly, giving up for the moment the contention that she had not revoked. “I always ask if my partner has no more of a suit, and I always maintain that a revoke is more the partner’s fault than the player’s. Of course, if our adversaries claim it——”

“Naturally we do, Mapp,” said Irene. “You were down on me sharp enough the other day.”

Miss Mapp wrinkled her face up into the sweetest and extremest smile of which her mobile features were capable.

“Darling, you won’t mind my telling you that just at this moment you are being dummy,” she said, “and so you mustn’t speak a single word. Otherwise there is no[44] revoke, even if there was at all, which I consider far from proved yet.”

[44]

There was no further proof possible beyond the clear and final evidence of the cards, and since everybody, including Miss Mapp herself, was perfectly well aware that she had revoked, their opponents merely marked up the penalty and the game proceeded. Miss Mapp, of course, following the rule of correct behaviour after revoking, stiffened into a state of offended dignity, and was extremely polite and 

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