When the old gentleman returned about midnight, he found Maltravers awaiting him in the library; and Cleveland, having won fourteen points, was in a very gay, conversable humour.
"You perverse hermit!" said he, "talk of solitude, indeed, with so pleasant a family a hundred yards distant! You deserve to be solitary,—I have no patience with you. They complain bitterly of your desertion, and say you were, at first, the enfant de la maison."
"So you like the Mertons? The clergyman is sensible, but commonplace."
"A very agreeable man, despite your cynical definition, and plays a very fair rubber. But Vargrave is a first-rate player."
"Vargrave is there still?"
"Yes, he breakfasts with us to-morrow,—he invited himself."
"Humph!"
"He played one rubber; the rest of the evening he devoted himself to the prettiest girl I ever saw,—Miss Cameron. What a sweet face! so modest, yet so intelligent! I talked with her a good deal during the deals in which I cut out. I almost lost my heart to her."
"So Lord Vargrave devoted himself to Miss Cameron?"
"To be sure,—you know they are to be married soon. Merton told me so. She is very rich. He is the luckiest fellow imaginable, that Vargrave! But he is much too old for her: she seems to think so too. I can't explain why I think it; but by her pretty reserved manner I saw that she tried to keep the gay minister at a distance: but it would not do. Now, if you were ten years younger, or Miss Cameron ten years older, you might have had some chance of cutting out your old friend."