"Thank you," he replied, quietly. "I should have liked to have won,
just this once, but all along I felt that the chances were against
me, and that fortune would play me some trick or other."

"It was not fortune. Fortune had nothing to do with it," she said,
indignantly. "You were beaten by a crime--by a mean, miserable
crime--by the same sort of crime by which you were beaten before."

"I have no reason for supposing that there is any connection."

"Frank," she broke in, suddenly, and he started as for the first
time for years she called him by his Christian name, "you are an
old friend of ours, and you promised me that you would always be my
friend. Do you think that it is right to be trying to throw dust
into my eyes? Don't you think, on the contrary, that as a friend
you should speak frankly to me?"

Frank was silent for a moment.

"On some subjects, yes, Bertha; on others, what has passed between
us makes it very difficult for a man to know what he ought to do.
But be assured that if I saw you make any fatal mistake, any
mistake at least that I believed to be fatal, I should not
hesitate, even if I knew that I should be misunderstood, and that I
should forfeit your liking, by so doing. This is just one of the
cases when I do not feel justified, as yet, in speaking. Carthew is
not my friend, and you know it. If I had had no personal feud--for
it has become that with him--I should be more at liberty to speak,
but as it is I would rather remain silent. I tell you this now,
that you may know, in case I ever do meddle in your affairs, how
painful it is for me to do so, and how unwillingly I do it. At any
rate, there is nothing whatever to connect the accident that took
place today with him. The event is one of a series of successes
that he has gained over me. It does not affect me much, for though
I should have liked to have won today, I don't feel about such
matters as I used to.

"You see, when a man has suffered one heavy defeat, he does not
care about how minor skirmishes may go."

They walked up and down in silence for some time, then she said
quietly:

"The music has stopped. I think, Frank, that I had better go in
again. So you will take us tomorrow?"

"Certainly," he said.

He took her in to Lady Greendale, and then went off to the Osprey.
He was feeling in higher spirits than he had done for some time, as
he walked up and down the deck for an hour before turning in. It
seemed to him that she migh