As I arose from the table, Brown pulled back my chair saying:
"I hope dinner pleased you, sir?"
I nodded an indifferent assent, but I would have been more appreciative, I think, if I had known how long it was to be before I should again dine with a mind so free from care.
CHAPTER II
A GAME OF CARDS
It was ten o'clock when I had finished my cigar and coffee in the library—where I had gone after dining—and I left the club and started for White's. It was a rainy, sloppy night, such as New York often provides in winter, and I hurried over the few blocks that separated me from my destination.
As I approached the house, I saw the light shining beneath the shade—which was not quite down—at the front window, and it held out promise of cheerful warmth within.
As I have said, White's rooms were on Nineteenth Street; they were on the ground floor of a house about midway of the block between Fifth and Sixth Avenues and on the north side of the street.
He had the entire first floor, which consisted of two rooms connected by a short passageway. The front room was the sitting-room, and the back his bedroom. With the latter I was not familiar at that time, but the sitting-room was a thoroughly delightful apartment. The floor was carpeted with Eastern rugs, and the walls, papered a Pompeiian red, were hung with old prints and weapons. To the right of the door, as you entered, was a well selected library; to the left a piano.