'Because,' replied Hew, deliberately, while a malevolent gleam shot from his parti-coloured eyes, 'it is seldom safe to play écarté, or piquet either, after dinner, and when drinking brandy-and-soda with a fellow who takes nothing—is too wary to do so.'
'And so you have lost?' said Sir Piers, flushing with indignation.
'Fearfully; and I suspect the scoundrel was in the habit of dropping his cards.'
'What!' roared Sir Piers, aghast. 'The devil! Do you say so?' He pinched his gold eyeglasses tighter on his high aristocratic nose, and absolutely glared through them at Hew, as he turned his keen face full round to await what he had to say, and with a face expressive of intense chagrin, disappointment, and dismay.
'I do not say so—I only suspect,' said Hew, afraid that he, in the extremity of his malice, had roused a storm it might be difficult to quell, or see the end of.
'And he is one of the Cameronians!' exclaimed Sir Piers, in an agitated voice. 'Gad! in my time, he would have had his hands tied behind his back, and been drummed to the barrack-gate. Do you actually tell me this? Gambling, in camp or quarters, I never permitted for a moment—they are strictly forbidden by the thirty-fourth paragraph of the sixth section of the Queen's Regulations. But the idea of gambling and cheating at Eaglescraig! D—me, I'll explode! I remember that, when we were cantoned at Jubbulpore, before we were relieved by the Seventy-Eighth, with bag, baggage, and twelve bagpipes——'
'But our play is ended now, Sir Piers—once and for ever!' interrupted Hew, as he shivered at the idea of an Indian anecdote, which was certain to follow whenever Sir Piers mounted his Oriental hobby-horse.
'Ended; I should think so! But, as we used to say in India, beware of a black Brahmin and a white pariah!'
The point of this aphorism was not very apparent; but Hew, satisfied that he had now completely ruined Cecil Falconer so far as Sir Piers was concerned, was so well pleased that he listened to a sudden Bengal narrative of a thirty days' march, amid the horrors of Dacoits and Thugs, swamps and jungles, tigers and snakes, dismounted guns and broken bones, dead bullocks and swollen rivers; and then, after a pause, during which the baronet had been reflecting with knitted brows, he said:
'But to return to the first subject, Hew. Do you mean to tell me, and do you seriously think, that this—a—a—person, has made any undue impression upon her—upon Mary?'