"Upon my word, Mr. Griscombe," she cried indignantly, "I profess I am entirely at a loss to understand your anger against this poor old gentleman. What, may I ask, is the reason of your excessive fury at so harmless a request as that which he has proffered?"
"Madame," exclaimed Griscombe, vehemently, "I cannot explain it to you."
"I confess," she cried with still more heat than before, "I cannot understand your violence, unless it is that you fear to appear ridiculous by indulging this poor old gentleman in his innocent whim." And then, upon our hero's continued silence, she added: "I could not have believed it possible that you could have exhibited so much impatience and anger at so slight a cause. My opinion of you is altogether altered from what it was; nor can I again recover my original favorable impression unless you offer such reparation as lies in your power by accepting the fee which has been so generously offered you, and by sitting down and gratifying your client with the game of tit-tat-toe he has requested. Should you decline such reparation, I can, as I say, never entertain again for you the regard I have until now experienced."
"Indeed," said the old man, in a gentle voice, but with a smile in which Griscombe read the most malignant and sinister suggestion, "if the young gentleman apprehends any malevolent designs upon my part, he has only to declare what he suspects; and I will go directly away. If, however, he has nothing with which to accuse me, I, too, shall insist upon it that he, by way of a penance, shall indulge me with my little game."
Poor Griscombe stood overwhelmed with a multitude of emotions. One thing alone was clear to his mind: he must protect his innocent and precious charge from all knowledge of what had now doubtless befallen her unhappy father. It were better that those emissaries of evil that had beset him should fulfil their every purpose—even to the last—rather than that she should suffer. He must be dumb, and allow them to conclude their dreadful work. After all, he could easily inform M. de Troinville before the fatal portmanteau should be opened. "I will obey you if you command me, madame," he cried; "but pray, pray spare me this!" And, as he spoke, he fixed upon Miss Desmond a look of such agonizing appeal that she could not but have been moved by it, had she not been blinded by her own imperiousness of purpose. As it was, she only hardened her face into a still more immovable expression of determination. Where-upon, finding her not to be shaken, our hero sank into rather than sat down upon the chair beside him.
The old gentleman with the beard, having thus gained his point, beamed with the utmost cheerfulness of expression, and, advancing with alacrity, pushed aside the dinner plates, and immediately assumed a position opposite his unwilling opponent, and between him and the door of the room where his precious portmanteau lay hidden. Having thus established himself, the old gentleman drew from a capacious pocket a sandalwood box inlaid with arabesque figures of gold and mother-of-pearl. Opening this box, he displayed, to the profound astonishment of at least one of his companions, an exquisitely wrought tablet of mother-of-pearl and gold, pierced with one-and-eighty holes arranged in a square of nine. Opening a slide in the side of the tablet, he thence emptied from a receptacle upon the table five curiously wrought pins of gold, and a like number of silver. Handing the five pins of the more precious metal to Griscombe and reserving for himself the five pegs of silver, the old gentleman immediately explained to his listeners the simple process of the game upon which he proposed to embark. Each player in turn was to thrust a pin into a hole in the tablet, and he who could so far escape his opponent's interference as to arrange three of the five pins in a line should, upon each occurrence thereof, have scored a point in the game. Having completed these easy instructions, he immediately invited Griscombe to open the play, which he upon his part entered upon with every appearance of entire enjoyment and satisfaction.
At any time Griscombe would have been no match for the extraordinary skill of his opponent; but, as it was, he was so torn and distracted by a multitude of emotions that he occasionally knew not what he was doing or what he beheld. His imagination framed the most ominous images of what was going forward in the bedroom beyond; and he lost again and again, while at times his hands trembled so that he could hardly place the pin in its respective hole. Now and then his hearing, strung to an unnatural intensity of key, seemed to detect smothered sounds from the adjoining room; and at such times the ivory tablet appeared to vanish from his sight, and the sweat started from every pore.
But, in spite of all he suffered, he took care never to permit the young lady to perceive the agony under which he labored. The frequent mistakes of which he was guilty and the extreme inadequacy with which he played the game she attributed to mortification or to obstinacy. At last, at some more preposterous blunder, she could contain her patience no longer. "Why do you not place your pin in that hole, Mr. Griscombe?" she cried: "it will score you a point," And Griscombe, obeying, found the next instant that three of his pins stood in a line.
At that moment a faint whistle sounded from without; and the old gentleman, as though in answer to a signal, declared his desire for the game to be entirely appeased. Withdrawing the pins from the tablet, he replaced them in their receptacle, replaced the tablet itself in the box and shut the lid with a snap. "Madame," he said, "I should have played with you instead of with our young gentleman here; for, indeed, he exhibits no great aptitude for the game." Then addressing Griscombe with a double meaning that set every nerve of his victim to quivering, "Nevertheless, young sir," he observed, "you have afforded me a great deal of entertainment, and I protest that you have entirely earned the fee which you have pocketed." Thereupon he incontinently departed, leaving the young lady and our hero to digest, each in his or her own way, the events that had just transpired.