“Will you bet on the game or the gammon?”
“On nothing, my lord.”
“Oh, confound you!”
He turned again and went to the window.
“This is frightful!” he said to himself. “Nothing whatever to help one to forget! If the day goes on like this, I shall out with everything.—Maybe I had better!—How the clodpoles would stare! I believe I should laugh in the middle of it.—And that fellow lurking somewhere all the time about the place, watching his chance when the night comes!—It’s horrible. I shall go mad!” This last he spoke aloud.
“Papa!” said his daughter sharply.
Lord Mergwain started, and looked troubled. What he might have uttered, he could not tell.
“A rubber, then,” he said, approaching the fire again, “—on any terms, or no terms at all!”
He took up the cards.
“Ha, there’s blood on them,” he cried, and dashing them on the table, turned once more to the window.