-never played, except at the public tables, and won more than I
lost. Well, sir, there was a chap that I saw at the hotel and the Palace
Royal too, a regular swell fellow, with white kid gloves and a tuft to
his chin, Bloundell-Bloundell his name was, as I made acquaintance with
somehow, and he asked me to dinner, and took me to Madame the Countess
de Foljambe's soirees--such a woman, Strong!--such an eye! such a hand
at the pianner. Lor bless you, she'd sit down and sing to you, and gaze
at you, until she warbled your soul out of your body a'most. She
asked me to go to her evening parties every Toosday; and didn't I take
opera-boxes and give her dinners at the restauranteur's, that's all?
But I had a run of luck at the tables, and it was not in the dinners and
opera-boxes that poor Clavering's money went. No, be hanged to it, it
was swept off in another way. One night, at the Countess's, there
was several of us at supper--Mr. Bloundell-Bloundell, the Honourable
Deuceace, the Marky de la Tour de Force--all tip-top nobs, sir, and the
height of fashion, when we had supper, and champagne you may be sure
in plenty, and then some of that confounded brandy. I would have it--I
would it go on at it--the Countess mixed the tumblers of punch for me,
and we had cards as well as grog after supper, and I played and drank
until I don't know what I did. I was like I was last night. I was taken
away and put to bed somehow, and never woke until the next day, to
a roaring headache, and to see my servant, who said the Honourable
Deuceace wanted to see me, and was waiting in the sitting-room. 'How are
you, Colonel?' says he, a coming into my bedroom. 'How long did you stay
last night after I went away? The play was getting too high for me, and
I'd lost enough to you for one night.'"

"'To me,' says I, 'how's that, my dear feller? (for though he was an
Earl's son, we was as familiar as you and me). How's that, my dear
feller?' says I, and he tells me, that he had borrowed thirty louis of
me at vingt-et-un, that he gave me an I.O.U. for it the night before,
which I put into my pocket-book before he left the room. I takes out my
card-case--it was the Countess as worked it for me--and there was the
I.O.U. sure enough, and he paid me thirty louis in gold down upon the
table at my bedside. So I said he was a gentleman, and asked him if he
would like to take anything, when my servant should get it for him; but
the Honourable Deuceace don't drink o