nd drinking
congregated round the tables. The men mostly discussed various phases of
the game; there was so little else for idlers to talk about these days.
No comedies or other diversions, neither cock-fighting nor bear-baiting,
and abuse of my Lord Protector and his rigorous disciplinarian laws had
already become stale.

The women talked dress and coiffure, the new puffs, the fanciful
pinners.

But at the center table Segrave still sat, refusing all refreshment,
waiting with obvious impatience for the ending of this unwelcome
interval. When first he found himself isolated in the crowd, he had
counted over with febrile eagerness the money which lay in a substantial
heap before him.

"Saved!" he muttered between his teeth, speaking to himself like one
who is dreaming, "saved! Thank God! ... Two hundred and fifty pounds ...
only another fifty and I'll never touch these cursed cards again ...
only another fifty...."

He buried his face in his hands; the moisture stood out in heavy drops
on his forehead. He looked all round him with ever-growing impatience.

"My God! why don't they come back! ... Another fifty pounds ... and I
can put the money back ... before it has been missed.... Oh! why don't
they come back!"

Quite a tragedy expressed in those few muttered words, in the trembling
hands, the damp forehead. Money taken from an unsuspecting parent,
guardian or master, which? What matter? A tragedy of ordinary occurrence
even in those days when social inequalities were being abolished by act
of Parliament.

In the meanwhile Lord Walterton, halting of speech, insecure of
foothold, after his third bumper of heady sack, was explaining to Sir
Michael Isherwood the mysteries of his system for playing the noble game
of primero.

"It is sure to break the bank in time," he said confidently, "I am for
going to Paris where play runs high, and need not be carried on in this
hole and corner fashion to suit cursed Puritanical ideas."

"Tell me your secret, Walterton," urged worthy Sir Michael, whose broad
Shropshire acres were heavily mortgaged, after the rapine and pillage
of civil war.

"Well! I can but tell you part, my friend," rejoined the other, "yet
'tis passing simple. You begin with one golden guinea ... and lose it
... then you put up two and lose again...."

"Passing simple," assented Sir Michael ironically.

"But after that you put up four guineas."

"And lose it."

"Yea! yea! mayhap you lose it ... but