and my friend here," he bowed, "has staked deeply. Faith, it may be that he has done me but a favour. For who of you will swear that if he found himself upon a morning penniless, but he'd be glad for so pretty an excuse for taking out his passport to the other side?"

The book was laid upon the table.

Lord Burroughs' face was livid. On a sudden a sickly fear for his fortune came over him.

Before Yerington could write, Elliot interfered.

"A man's a coward," he cried, turning to him, "to lend himself to such an act as this for fear of ridicule. Give this drunken bully the laugh, as he deserves." Yerington's gaiety had returned.

"I hold him in the hollow of my hand," he said, " and after all, life is all a chance."

And he signed with a steady hand.

Then came Lord Burroughs' signature, harsh, squarelettered, with a deep-drawn, cruel-looking line underneath it.

"My dear Burroughs, I'll pension you," said Lord Yerington as he closed the book.

CHAPTER IV

A PLEASANT HOUR-SLAYER

Be wise to-day; 'tis madness to defer:
Next day the fatal precedent will plead;
Thus on, till wisdom is pushed out of life.

-EDWARD YOUNG.

WHEN the madness of play is in the air, memories are brief, and five minutes after the strange wager had been registered, the gaming was as deep as ever.

Yerington bet no more. His high spirits were unabated. Hugh Elliot still played, venturing small sums only, withdrawing from the game at intervals, and keeping his gainings cautiously aside. The moment his gold showed a deficit, that moment the sport was over for him. He had done his share of drinking, though his head bore it steadily. It may be that beneath his unmoved exterior the dour Scot grew a bit dourer.

The tall old clock against the wall pointed to the hour of four. At that moment the door of the room opened quietly and a man appeared standing in the shadowy passage, the light of the room but half revealing him. He was of slight figure and the pallor of his face was deathlike. As the scene within the room was revealed to him, though the sounds which had greeted him should have prepared him for it, he paused as if gathering heart to advance.

Yerington first recognised him.

"Burn me, if it isn't Hervey! Come in, you vagabond. What hours, my son, what hours! Give an account of yourself, sirrah!"

This remark was followed by the waving of dice-boxes and a dozen laughing challenges.

Lord Hervey entered and closed the door behind him. There was a curious hush in his manner. The light of the room now revealed him clearly-his sunken features, large eyes and close-set mouth. A strange figure he appeared, elaborately dressed; and his pinched face, now that the candlelight shone full upon it, showed a touch of womanish rouge upon the cheeks. Several exuberant gentlemen sprang to meet him and bundled him unceremoniously into the middle of the room. At that moment they felt no respect for his sharp tongue, nor for the dignity which, as if in defiance of his slight physique, he usually supported with special emphasis.

"Faith," he said at length, drawing his handkerchief across his lips as if he spoke with difficulty, but his crisp utterance proved that wine was not the explanation. "What a picture for Hogarth! 'Tis a pity he isn't here. Yerington, you do well, on my faith, you study the mode. Gad's life, what would you more? The mode!"

"He is in form to-night," whispered George Selwyn. Pray heaven, he may continue."

"We treat the hours, Hervey, as you do yourself," said Yerington, "as if they were our enemies, and we slay them as merrily as may be. Would you have us mumble them as a friar does his beads, with prayers? That's to be old at twenty."

Hervey bowed with a flourish.

Gentlemen, I commend you, I commend you all. Condole with me that I have missed this pleasant hourslaying, but for the moment another matter held me. A mere trifle, but it kept me by the heel. Egad, such accidents occur at times. Had I the making of the world, such affairs would not be so damned intrusive. They spoil a man's stomach."

He took a pinch of snuff, tapped the box lightly and returned it to his waistcoat pocket.

"Has she been unkind?" hiccoughed Sir Geoffrey, who had long since bidden discretion good-bye.

It was well known that Lord Hervey's wife, the beautiful Mary Lapel, was a lady of uncertain temper.

"Now I ask," went on Lord Hervey, in his cold, thin voice, unheeding Sir Geoffrey, "what two events only,— I propound it to you as philosophers, can one be certain of in this life?"

"La, 'tis a conundrum," cried Sir Geoffrey.

Lord Hervey turned with a contemptuous smile to the intoxicated dandy and watched him for an instant before. he answered.

66

'Fore heaven, it is a conundrum."

"Oh, mighty wizard!" cried Gilly Williams. "Point out your cave and we'll attend you there. But, 'fore George, my pocket aches like a beggar's stomach. My neighbour here hath my birthday clothes, my coach and six, and Lord knows what else. Let us to play again, I beg."

"What is the answer?" asked Lord Yerington of Hervey, for he read something seriously amiss in his seeming irrelevance.

Lord Hervey turned to him and lifted up two fingers, smiling as he did so.

"We are sure of but two things," he said, "of birth and death."

"He croaks, the raven croaks," someone cried.

"And the joke," went on Lord Hervey, seating himself casually upon a corner of the long table, "the pith and kernel of the whole matter is, that unconscious we enter the world and dead we leave it. There's humour there, methinks," and leaning forward he poured himself a glass of punch, and tossed it off at a draught. "That life's only realities we should pass unknowing through!" Lord Yerington was serious as his eyes searched Her

vey's face. Beneath this man's hardness and habitual cynicism he often fancied that he caught the note of real feeling. Occasionally the conviction seized him that under his dandyisms and his rouge there dwelt a sensitive and not ungenerous heart, which chose to cloak itself in gibes; a very real contempt of forms, which concealed itself behind an over-elaborated parade of them. Lord Yerington laid his hand upon his shoulder. His handsome face was grave.

"There's something behind this," he said in a low voice; "what news have you?"

Lord Hervey moistened his lips, for they were dry, and shrugged his shoulders.

"A mere nothing," he said slowly, "a bagatelle. 'Tis but that Mountford-"

At the sound of this name the men ceased their play to listen, all save the slumbering gentleman, whose snore crossed the waiting silence.

"You know, gentlemen," he said, interrupting himself, as he turned his head over his shoulder to smile down the table, "his gift for hour-slaying. Well, wise man or prodigal, call him what you will, he, too, has been playing, but doubtless he was a blunderer. All who fail are blunderers. He's lost everything he possessed and something more, I dare venture. And so "-he snapped his fingers" he ended it!"

He sat upon the table motionless. For an instant his habitual mask of indifference 'dropped and his face, the rouge mocking him, was bathed in tragic sorrow, for Mountford had been dear to him.

"Not dead!" cried Yerington.

Hervey roused himself with an effort and reassumed his usual appearance of insouciant indifference.

"He has faced," he answered, "the second of life's realities."