YOU idiot!&rdquo; said his wife, and threw down her cards.<br />I turned my head away quickly, to avoid seeing Hayley Delane&rsquo;s face; though why I wished to avoid it I could not have told you, much less why I should have imagined (if I did) that a man of his age and importance would notice what was happening to the wholly negligible features of a youth like myself.<br />I turned away so that he should not see how it hurt me to hear him called an idiot, even in joke&mdash;well, at least half in joke; yet I often thought him an idiot myself, and bad as my own poker was, I knew enough of the game to judge that his&mdash;when he wasn&rsquo;t attending&mdash;fully justified such an outburst from his wife. Why her sally disturbed me I couldn&rsquo;t have said; nor why, when it was greeted by a shrill guffaw from her &ldquo;latest,&rdquo; young Bolton Byrne, I itched to cuff the little bounder; nor why, when Hayley Delane, on whom banter always dawned slowly but certainly, at length gave forth his low rich gurgle of appreciation&mdash;why then, most of all, I wanted to blot the whole scene from my memory. Why?