“And is my cousin, Mr. Vernon, here to-night?” he asked, smiling.
I replied I supposed not; he had received no card when we had parted that morning, and I knew of none since.
“I shall be very glad to meet him,” said Overton. “I think him a fine fellow, in spite of our disagreement. I see you are not playing.”
“I have no taste for play, strange to say.”
“Do not try to acquire it,” he said; “it is wrong, you may depend upon it; but indulgence in it makes many believe it to be right. Every time you look at a sin, it gets better looking.”
I was surprised to hear sin mentioned in the society of such elegant and well-bred sinners as I saw around me, who never alluded to it, except officially, as it were, on Sunday, when they all declared themselves miserable sinners—for that occasion only. Overton then sauntered over toward Lady Arabella, who seemed to recognize his approach by instinct. She turned to him, her cards in her hands, and flushed deeply; he gazed at her sternly as if in reproof, and, after a slight remark or two, moved off, to her evident chagrin.
Daphne being near me then, I said to her with a forced laugh,—
“What is the meaning, I beg you to tell me, of the pantomime between Lady Arabella and Captain Overton?”
Daphne hesitated, and then said,—
“Captain Overton was one of the gayest men about London until a year or two ago. Since then, it is said, he has turned Methody. It is believed he goes to Mr. Wesley’s meetings, although he has never been actually caught there. He lives plainly, and, some say, he gives his means to the poor; he will not go to the races any more, nor play, and he does not like to see Arabella play.”