SILVER CHIMES AND GOLDEN FETTERS.
I.
WALDEMAR FALKENSTEIN AND VALÉRIE L'ESTRANGE.
"A quarter to twelve! By Heaven if my luck don't change before the year is out, I vow I'll never touch a card in the next!" exclaimed one of several men playing lansquenet in Harry Godolphin's rooms at Knightsbridge.
There were seven or eight of them, some with long rent-rolls, others within an ace of the Queen's Bench; the poor devils losing in the long run much oftener and more recklessly than the rich fellows; all of them playing high, as that beau joueur of the Guards, Godolphin, always did.
Luck had been dead against the man who spoke ever since they had deserted the mess-room for the cartes in the privacy of Harry's rooms. If Fortune is a woman, he ought to have found favor in her eyes. His age was between thirty and thirty-five, his figure with grace and strength combined, his features nobly and delicately cut, his head, like Canning's, one of great intellectual beauty, and by the flash of his large dark eyes, and the additional paleness of his cheek, it was easy to see he was playing high once too often.
Five minutes passed—he lost still; ten minutes' luck was yet against him. A little French clock began the Silver Chimes that rang out the Old Year; the twelfth stroke sounded, the New Year was come, and Waldemar Falkenstein rose and drank down some cognac—a ruined man.
"A happy New Year to you, and better luck, Falkenstein," cried Godolphin, drinking his toast with a ringing laugh and a foaming bumper of Chambertin. "What shall I wish you? The richest wife in the kingdom, a cabal that will break all the banks, for Mistletoe to win the Oaks, or for your eyes to be opened to your sinful state, as the parson phrases it—which, eh?"