-that gout which had sent him to
Wiesbaden, last September! Accursed luck that Gyp had ever set eyes on
this fellow Fiorsen, with his fatal fiddle! Certainly not since Gyp had
come to live with him, fifteen years ago, had he felt so forlorn and fit
for nothing. To-morrow he would get back to Mildenham and see what hard
riding would do. Without Gyp--to be without Gyp! A fiddler! A chap who
had never been on a horse in his life! And with his crutch-handled cane
he switched viciously at the air, as though carving a man in two.

His club, near Hyde Park Corner, had never seemed to him so desolate.
From sheer force of habit he went into the card-room. The afternoon had
so darkened that electric light already burned, and there were the usual
dozen of players seated among the shaded gleams falling decorously on
dark-wood tables, on the backs of chairs, on cards and tumblers, the
little gilded coffee-cups, the polished nails of fingers holding cigars.
A crony challenged him to piquet. He sat down listless. That
three-legged whist--bridge--had always offended his fastidiousness--a
mangled short cut of a game! Poker had something blatant in it. Piquet,
though out of fashion, remained for him the only game worth playing--the
only game which still had style. He held good cards and rose the winner
of five pounds that he would willingly have paid to escape the boredom of
the bout. Where would they be by now? Past Newbury; Gyp sitting
opposite that Swedish fellow with his greenish wildcat's eyes. Something
furtive, and so foreign, about him! A mess--if he were any judge of
horse or man! Thank God he had tied Gyp's money up--every farthing! And
an emotion that was almost jealousy swept him at the thought of the
fellow's arms round his soft-haired, dark-eyed daughter--that pretty,
willowy creature, so like in face and limb to her whom he had loved so
desperately.

Eyes followed him when he left the card-room, for he was one who inspired
in other men a kind of admiration--none could say exactly why. Many
quite as noted for general good sportsmanship attracted no such
attention. Was it "style," or was it the streak of something not quite
typical--the brand left on him by the past?

Abandoning the club, he walked slowly along the railings of Piccadilly
towards home, that house in Bury Street, St. James's, which had been his
London abode since he was quite young--one of the few in the street that
had been left untouched