"Well, come, I'll tell you how we'll pass the time. I'll toss you for guineas, as many tosses as you like," rejoined the small gentleman, accommodatingly. "What do you say—is it a go?"
"Sit down, then," replied Blarden; "sit down, can't you? and begin."
Accordingly the two friends proceeded to recreate themselves thus pleasantly. Mr. Blarden's luck was decidedly bad, and he had been already "physicked," as his companion playfully remarked, to the amount of some five-and-twenty guineas, and his temper had become in a corresponding degree affected, when he observed Sir Henry Ashwoode, jaded, haggard, and with dress disordered, approaching the place where he sat.
"Blarden, we had better leave this place," said Ashwoode, glancing round at the crowded benches; "there's too much noise here. What say you?"
"What do I say?" rejoined Blarden, in his very loudest and most insolent tone—"I say you have made an appointment and broke it, so stand there till it's my convenience to talk to you—that's all."
Ashwoode felt his blood tingling in his veins with fury as he observed the sneering significant faces of those who, attracted by the loud tones of Nicholas Blarden, watched the effect of his insolence upon its object. He heard conversations subside into whispers and titters among the low scoundrels who enjoyed his humiliation; yet he dared not answer Blarden as he would have given worlds at that moment to have done, and with the extremest difficulty restrained himself from rushing among the vile rabble who exulted in his degradation, and compelling them at least to respect and fear him. While he stood thus with compressed lips and a face pale as ashes with rage, irresolute what course to take, one of the coins for which Blarden played rolled along the table, and thence along the floor for some distance.
"Go, fetch that guinea—jump, will you?" cried Blarden, in the same boisterous and intentionally insolent tone. "What are you standing there for, like a stick? Pick it up, sir."
Ashwoode did not move, and an universal titter ran round the spectators, whose attention was now effectually enlisted.
"Do what I order you—do it this moment. D—— your audacity, you had better do it," said Blarden, dashing his clenched fist on the table so as to make the coin thereon jump and jingle.
Still Ashwoode remained resolutely fixed, trembling in every joint with very passion; prudence told him that he ought to leave the place instantly, but pride and obstinacy, or his evil angel, held him there.