"I never heard of them."
The bookseller smiled with compassion. "To be sure; at sea there are no books. Well, cousin, this young gentleman sometimes, when he is in the humour, will write me an essay in the true vein of an Addison. I will speak with him. If any one can, he can do your business for you."
It was by the kind offices of this gentleman, whom I found to be a person of quick wit and ready understanding, besides being of a most obliging disposition, that I was enabled to see, with my own eyes, an evening such as my lord loved. As for the details, you must, if you please, hold me excused. Let it suffice that our observations began at a gaming house and ended at a tavern. At both places I kept in the background, because I would not be recognised by Lord Fylingdale.
He came into the gaming table with the same lofty, cold carriage which he had shown at our humble assembly. He advanced to the table; he began to play; no one could tell from his lordship's face whether he lost or won; in half an hour or so my friend returned to my corner. "He has lost a cool five hundred. They are whispering round the table that he loses hundreds every evening. All the world are asking what gold mine he possesses that he can stand these losses?"
"I know his gold mine," I replied, with a sigh. "But it is nearly exhausted."
We stayed a little longer. It was about ten or eleven in the evening that his lordship left the table.
"Come," said my friend. "I know the tavern where he will spend the next three or four hours. I can take you there. The bowls of punch and the company and everything are provided at his lordship's expense. Mr. Pentecrosse, it must be not a gold mine, but a mine of Golconda, to bear this profusion."
"I tell you, sir, whatever it is, the mine is nearly run out."
"It will not be bad for the morals of the town when it has quite run out."
As regards the tavern and its company it is, indeed, astonishing to me that any man should find pleasure in such a company and in such discourse. At the head of the table sat my lord. He appeared to be neither pleased nor displeased; the drink flowed like a stream of running water; it seized on all and made their faces red, their voices thick; the noble leader sat unmoved, or, if moved at all, then by a kind of contempt. At two o'clock he rose and walked out into the street, where his chair awaited him.