with their backs towards me, sat two persons,
who seemed, as was often the habit, to play in concert. A large heap of
gold and notes lay before them, and several cards, marked with pin-holes
to chronicle the run of the game, were scattered about. Unable to see
their faces, I was struck by one singular but decisive mark of their
difference in condition and rank. The hands of one were fair and
delicate almost as a woman's--the blue veins circling clearly through
them, and rings of great price and brilliancy glittering on the fingers;
those of the other were coarse, brown-stained, and ill cared for--the
sinewy fingers and strong bony knuckles denoting one accustomed to
laborious exertions. It was strange that two persons, evidently so wide
apart in their walks in life, should be thus associated; and feeling
a greater interest from the chance phrase of English one of them had
dropped, I watched them closely. By degrees I could mark that their
difference in dress was no less conspicuous; for although the more
humble was well and even fashionably attired, he had not the same
distinctive marks which characterised his companion as a person of
class and condition. While I looked, the pile of gold before them had
gradually melted down to some few pieces; and as they bent down their
heads over the cards, and concerted as to their play, it was clear that
by their less frequent ventures they were becoming more cautious.

'No, no I' said he, who seemed to be the superior, 'I'll not risk it.'

'I say yes, yes!' muttered the other, in a deeper voice; 'the _rouge_
can't go on for ever: it has passed eleven times.'

'I know,' said the former bitterly; 'and I have lost seventeen thousand
francs.'

'_You_ have lost!' retorted the other savagely, but in the same low
tone; 'why not _we?_ Am _I_ for nothing in all this?'

'Come, come, Ulick, don't be in a passion!'

The name and the tone of the speaker startled me. I leaned forward;
my very head reeled as I looked. It was Lord Dudley de Vere and Ulick
Burke. The rush of passionate excitement that ran through me for a
minute or two, to be thus thrown beside the two only enemies I had ever
had, unnerved me so far that I could not collect myself. To call them
forth at once, and charge them with their baseness towards me; to dare
them openly, and denounce them before that crowded assembly--was my
first rapid thought. But from this wild thrill of anger I was soon
turned, as Burke's voice, el