“I am relying upon Crewe to present me to her.”
“Oh! It was Crewe who brought you!” said his lordship, a little relieved. “I thought—at least, I wondered—But it doesn’t signify!”
Mr Ravenscar eyed him with a kind of bland surprise. “You seem to be most unaccountably put-out by my arrival, Adrian. What have I done to incur your disapproval?”
Lord Mablethorpe blushed more hotly than ever, and grasped his arm in a quick, friendly gesture. “Oh, Max, you fool! Of course you haven’t done anything! Indeed, I’m very glad to see you! I want to make you known to Miss Grantham. Deb! This is my cousin, Mr Ravenscar. I daresay you will have heard of him. He is a notable gamester, I can tell you!”
Miss Deborah Grantham, encountering Mr Ravenscar’s hard grey eyes, was not sure that she liked him. She acknowledged his bow with the smallest of curtseys, and said lightly: “You are very welcome, sir, and have certainly come to the right house. You know Lord Ormskirk, I believe?”
The middle-aged exquisite and Ravenscar exchanged nods. A large, loose-Embed man, standing on the other side of the table, said, with a twinkle: “Don’t be shy, Mr Ravenscar: we’re all mighty anxious to win your money! But, I warn you, Miss Grantham’s luck is in—isn’t it, me darlin’?—and the bank’s been winning this hour and more.”
“It’s commonly the way of E.O. banks—to win,” remarked a metallic, faintly sneering voice at Ravenscar’s elbow. “Servant, Ravenscar!”
Mr Ravenscar, responding to this salutation, made a mental vow to rescue his cousin from the society into which he had been lured if he had to knock him out and kidnap him to do it. The Earl of Ormskirk, Sir James Filey, and—as a comprehensive glance round the room had informed him—all the more hardened gamesters who frequented Pall Mall and its environs were no fit companions for a youth scarcely out of swaddling-bands. It would, at that moment, have given Mr Ravenscar great pleasure to have seen Miss Grantham standing in the pillory, together with her aunt, and every other brelandiere who seduced green young men to ruin in these polite gaming-houses.
Nothing of this appeared in his face as he accepted Miss Grantham’s invitation to make his bet. E.O. tables held not the slightest lure for him, but since he had come to St James’s Square for the purpose of getting upon easy terms with Miss Grantham, and judged that the quickest way of doing this was to spend as much money as possible in her house, he spent the next half-hour punting recklessly on the spin of the table.
Meanwhile, the dowager at the faro-table, who was Lady Bellingham, had discovered his identity, and was pleasantly fluttered. One of her neighbours informed her that Ravenscar had twenty or thirty thousand pounds a year, but tempered these glad tidings by adding that he was said to have the devil’s own luck at all games of chance. If this were so, it was out tonight. Mr Ravenscar went down to the tune of five hundred guineas in the short time he spent at the E.O. table. While affecting an interest he was far from feeling in the gyrations of the little ball, he had the opportunity he sought of observing Miss Grantham. He was also obliged to observe his cousin’s lover-like attentions to the lady, a spectacle which made him feel physically unwell. Adrian’s frank blue eyes openly adored her; he paid very little attention to anyone else; and his attitude towards Lord Ormskirk reminded Ravenscar strongly of a dog guarding a bone.