CHAPTER XV
THE CARD ROOM
When Molly's chair was carried away, Lord Fylingdale returned to the assembly. The music had begun another moving and merry tune—that called "Richmond Ball"—the couples were taking their places, the young fellows dancing already as they stood waiting, with hands and feet and even shoulders all together, their partners laughing at them, and, with hands upon their frocks, pretending to set in the joy and the merriment of their hearts. And I believe that the withdrawal of Molly made them all much happier.
Two or three of the ladies standing apart were discussing the public rebuke just administered. They were angry, being ladies who conceited themselves on the score of manners, and were proud of their families.
"Not the whole House of Lords," said one, loud enough for his lordship to hear, "shall make me give my hand to a sailor's wench. Let her stick to her tar and her pitch. A pretty thing, indeed!"
"I hope," said another, agitating her fan violently, "that his lordship does not put the ladies of Norfolk on the same level as the girls of King's Lynn."
"Dear madam," said a third, "Lord Fylingdale called her an heiress—the heiress of Lynn. An heiress does not carry all her fortune on her back. Do you not think—some of us have sons—that we might, perhaps, receive this person with kindness?"
"No, madam. I will not be on any terms with this creature. In my family we consort with none but gentlefolk."
"Indeed, madam! But a hundred years ago your family, if I mistake not, were ploughing and ditching on the farms of my family."
Molly seemed like to prove a firebrand indeed. Lord Fylingdale, however, passed through them without any sign of hearing a word. He looked round; he observed that the next dance had begun, and that every lady was touching the hands of those who were not of her own exalted family. So that his admonition was bearing fruit. He then left the long room and went into the card room. Here he found the Lady Anastasia sitting at a table, surrounded by a little crowd of players. She held the bank. In the excitement of the play her eyes sparkled; her bosom heaved; her colour went and came visibly beneath the paint on her cheeks; her lips became pale and then returned to their proper colour; she rapped the table with her fingers. She was enjoying, in fact, the rapture which fills the heart of the gambler and makes play the only thing desirable in life. Perhaps the preacher could imagine no greater misery for the gamester than a heaven in which there were no cards.
The game which the Lady Anastasia introduced to these country gentlemen and the company generally was one called hazard, which is, I believe, commonly played by gamesters of fashion. Indeed, as was afterwards learned, this very lady had been by name presented by the grand jury of Middlesex for keeping a bank at the game of hazard on Sundays against all comers. At Lynn she kept the bank every evening except Sunday. It is a game which, more than any other, is said to lure on the player, so that a man who, out of simple curiosity, sets a guinea and calls a main, finds himself, after a few evenings of alternating fortune, winning and losing in turn, so much attracted by the game that he is only happy when he is playing. I know not how many gamblers for life were made during the short time when this lady held the bank. Wonderful to relate, no one seemed to consider that she was doing anything wrong. She was seen at morning prayers every day; she drank the waters of the spa; she walked in the gardens, taking tea and talking scandal with the greatest affability; and in the evenings, when she kept the bank, it was with a face so full of smiles, with so much appearance of rejoicing when a player won, and so much kindness and sympathy when a player lost, that no one asked whether she herself won or lost.