“Put brutally, my lord, since your sense of propriety is too nice to allow of your using these bills to obtain your ends, it will be convenient to you, I imagine, to put them into my hands. I shall use them to extricate my cousin from his entanglement. Once that is accomplished, I cannot suppose that Miss Grantham will continue to reject your offer.”
“There is much in what you say,” acknowledged his lordship. “And yet, my dear Ravenscar, and yet I am loath to part with them!”
“Then let us say good night,” Ravenscar replied, rising to his feet.
Ormskirk hesitated, looking at the scattered cards on the table. He was a gambler to the heart’s core, and it irked him unbearably to end the night thus. Ill-luck could not last for ever; it might be that it was already on the turn: indeed, he had held appreciably better cards in that last hand, as Ravenscar had noticed. He hated having to acknowledge Ravenscar to be his superior, too. He could conceive of few things more pleasing than to reverse their present positions. It might well be within his power to do so. He raised his hand. “Wait! After all, why not?” He got up, picked up one of the branches of candles, and carried it over to his writing-table at the end of the room. Setting it down there, he felt in his pocket for a key, and unlocked one of the drawers in the table, and pulled it out. He lifted a slim bundle of papers out, and brought it back to the table, tossing it down on top of the spilled cards. “There you are,” he said. “How fortunate it is that you are less squeamish than I!”
Ravenscar picked up the papers, and slipped them into the wide pocket of his coat. “Very fortunate,” he agreed. “You are fifteen hundred pounds in hand, my lord. Do you care to continue the game?”
Ormskirk raised his brows mockingly. “Had you not better count them? You will find there are six in all, for varying sums.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” replied Ravenscar. “Shall we continue?”
“By all means!” Ormskirk said, and sat down again. “We'll find that this—ah, transaction—has changed my luck.”
“We may,” agreed Ravenscar, cutting the cards towards him.
It seemed, in the next rubber, that the luck had indeed veered in his lordship’s favour. He played cautiously for while, grew bolder presently, won a little, lost a large rubber refilled his glass, and allowed all other considerations than the overmastering desire to get the better of Ravenscar too far from his mind. As the fumes of the brandy mounted to his brain, not clouding it, but exciting him, he ceased to keen an eye on the sum of his losses.