A card-table had been set out in a comfortable saloon on the ground-floor of the house. Several unbroken packs stood ready to hand, and it was not long before the butler carried into the room a tray loaded with bottles and decanters, which he placed upon a side-table. Lord Ormskirk directed him to move a branch of candles nearer to the card-table, and with a smile, and a slight movement of one white hand, invited Ravenscar to be seated.
“What stakes do you care to play for, my dear Ravenscar?” he inquired, breaking open two of the packs at his elbow, and beginning to shuffle the cards.
“It is immaterial to me,” Ravenscar replied. “Let the stakes be what you choose, my lord: I shall be satisfied.”
Lady Bellingham had been correct in saying that his lordship had been having deep doings during the past weeks. He had a bout of ill-luck which had pursued him even into the racing-field, and had gone down to the tune of several thousands. Ravenscar’s challenge could not have been worse timed, but it was not in his lordship’s character to draw back, particularly from an adversary towards whom he felt a profound animosity. It was this animosity, coupled with a gamester’s recklessness, which prompted him to reply: “Shall we say pound points, then?”
“Yes, certainly,” Ravenscar answered.
Ormskirk pushed the pack across to him; he cut for the deal, and lost it. “I hope not an ill-omen!” Ormskirk smiled.
“I hope not, indeed.”
The game opened quietly, no big hands being scored for some little time, and each man bent more upon summing up his opponent than upon the actual winning of points. The rubber went to Ormskirk, but the luck seemed to be running fairly evenly, and there was not much more than the hundred points for the game in it. Ormskirk was inclined to think Ravenscar an over-cautious player: an impression Mr Ravenscar had been at some pains to give him.
At the end of an hour, a glance at the score by his elbow showed his lordship that Ravenscar was steadily creeping ahead. He was too good a card-player not to know when he had met his match, and he recognized in the younger man one who combined his own flair for cards with a greater degree of cool caution. Lord Ormskirk, always playing for the highest prize, too often failed to defeat the major hand by the retention of some small card; again and again, Ravenscar, holding the minor hand, sacrificed a reasonable chance of scoring to spoil a pique which his lordship had felt sure of winning.
In temperament, Ravenscar had the advantage over his opponent. Trying, as a gamester must, to put all thought of his losses out of mind, Ormskirk was yet bitterly conscious of a tightening of the nerves, and still more bitterly aware of Ravenscar’s imperturbable calm. It mattered nothing to a man of his wealth, Ormskirk reflected, whether he won or lost; he could have cursed the misfortune that had caused Ravenscar to challenge him to this meeting at a moment when his own affairs stood in such confusion. The knowledge that he was in a tight corner, and might find himself facing ruin if the evening’s play went heavily against him, could not but affect his nerves, and, through them, his skill. He knew his judgement to be impaired by his desperate need, allowed Ravenscar to win a capotte through a miscalculation, and got up to pour himself out some brandy.