One evening Lady Tryon had been at the house of the Countess of Buckinghamshire, to which Harry had, very unwillingly, been compelled to accompany her. As usual, gambling went on, a gentleman of fashion keeping the faro-table. Harry saw by the expression of his grandmother’s countenance that she was a heavy loser. The more she lost, the higher stakes she seemed inclined to play for.
“Let the old lady have her way,” he heard a gentleman near whom he was standing observe, “a little bleeding will do her no harm.”
The Countess’s handsome rooms were full of people of rank and fashion. Tables were scattered about on each side with eager players, some engaged in cards, others casting the dice, while others stood round staking considerable sums on the turn of a card or throw of the ivory. All of them seemed brought together by one absorbing passion, which they shared with the stockbrokers of Change Alley and the frequenters of the lowest hells. A few like Harry might have been compelled to go there against their will—young daughters to attend their mothers, who were leading them into vice, and a few like Harry who had no money to stake. As he looked at the group of excited beings with sparkling eyes, the rouge cheeks of the ladies, with here and there a black patch to hide a blemish, or to set off the fairness of their skins; the haggard faces of the men, with their perukes pushed on one side, their lips puckered, pressed close together, many of them holding the cards with trembling knees, evidently with one foot in the grave, Harry could not help hoping that he might never become like one of them, and he longed once more to be back at Stanmore in the company of Mabel. He thought, too, of her dying cousin, for the last account which had been received gave no hopes of her recovery, and every day he expected to hear that she was no more. He was thankful when at length he received Lady Tryon’s commands to order her coach. She was in a worse humour even than usual.
“Fortune won’t desert me,” she said at length, as they were nearing home; “there’s another chance; I intend to purchase some lottery tickets: they can bring me through, though nothing else can, unless, Harry, when you marry the little heiress you take care of your old grand-dame; you owe her something for bringing you up as a gentleman, for if I had not taken you up you would have been even now a merchant’s clerk in the city! Faugh! that such should be the fate of a grandson of General Tryon.”
Harry did not venture to remark that her ladyship’s brother was a merchant, and probably had been a merchant’s clerk in his younger days; however, he thought as much.
Chapter Nine.
Played Out.—The Last Throw.
Lady Tryon had descended to her drawing-room, to which Harry had been summoned to receive her commands. He felt greatly disposed to emancipate himself from his thraldom. “Better a crust of bread and a cup of cold water than this sort of work,” he thought; “yet my grandmother has brought me up, she is the only relative to whom I owe obedience; perhaps something will turn up to free me.”