"More than I can pay," replied Percy, with a quivering lip.
"No! you shall pay it to-morrow, for you shall go shares with me to-night.
Observe," continued Saville, lowering his voice, "I never lose."
"How never?"
"Never, unless by design. I play at no game where chance only presides. Whist is my favourite game: it is not popular: I am sorry for it. I take up with other games,—I am forced to do it; but, even at rouge et noir, I carry about with me the rules of whist. I calculate—I remember."
"But hazard?"
"I never play at that," said Saville, solemnly. "It is the devil's game; it defies skill. Forsake hazard, and let me teach you ecarte; it is coming into fashion."
Saville took great pains with Godolphin; and Godolphin, who was by nature of a contemplative, not hasty mood, was no superficial disciple. As his biographer, I grieve to confess, that he became, though a punctiliously honest, a wise and fortunate gamester; and thus he eked out betimes the slender profits of a subaltern's pay.
This was the first great deterioration in Percy's mind—a mind which ought to have made him a very different being from what he became, but which no vice, no evil example, could ever entirely pervert.