They had agreed to be partners.  ’Partners at cards, even if we are not to be partners for life,’ Smithson had whispered, tenderly; and Lesbia’s only reply had been a modest lowering of lovely eyelids, and a faint, faint blush.  Lesbia’s blushes were growing fainter every day.

’That is because everything in your house is so confoundedly handsome and expensive,’ retorted Sir George, who did not very much care about being called George, tout court, by a person of Mr. Smithson’s obscure antecedents, but who had to endure the familiarity for reasons known only to himself and Mr. Smithson.  ’No man can expect to be comfortable in a house in which every room has cost a small fortune.  My wife re-arranged this den half-a-dozen years ago when we took to sittin’ here of an evenin’.  She picked up the chairs and the blue pots at Bonham’s, had everythin’ covered with brown velvet—­nice subdued tone, suit old people—­hung up that yaller curtain, just for a bit of colour, and here we are.’

‘It’s the cosiest room in town,’ said Colonel Delville, whereupon Mrs. Mostyn, while counters were being distributed, explained to the company on scientific principles why the room was comfortable, expatiating upon the effect of yellow and brown upon the retina, and some curious facts relating to the optic machinery of water-fleas, as lately discovered by a great naturalist.

Unfortunately for science, the game had now begun, and the players were curiously indifferent as to the visual organs of water-fleas.

The game went on merrily till the pearly lights of dawn began to creep through the chinks of Lady Kirkbank’s yellow curtain.  Everybody seemed gay, yet everybody could not be winning.  Fortune had not smiled upon Lesbia’s cards, or on those of her partner.  The Smithson and Haselden firm had come to grief.  Lesbia’s little ivory purse had been emptied of its three or four half-sovereigns, and Mr. Smithson had been capitalising a losing concern for the last two hours.  And the play had been fast and furious, although nominally for small stakes.

‘I am afraid to think of how much I must owe you,’ said Lesbia, when Mr. Smithson bade her good night.

‘Oh, nothing worth speaking of—­sixteen or seventeen pounds, at most.’

Lesbia felt cold and creepy, and hardly knew whether it was the chill of new-born day, or the sense of owing money to Horace Smithson.  Those three or four half-sovereigns to-night were the end of her last remittance from Lady Maulevrier.  She had had a great many remittances from that generous grandmother; and the money had all gone, somehow.  It was gone, and yet she had paid for hardly anything.  She had accounts with all Lady Kirkbank’s tradesmen.  The money had melted away—­it had oozed out of her pockets—­at cards, on the race-course, in reckless gifts to servants and people, at fancy fairs, for trifles bought here and there by the way-side, as it were, for the sake of buying.  If she had been suddenly asked for an account of her stewardship she could not have told what she had done with half of the money.  And now she must ask for twenty pounds more, and immediately, to pay Mr. Smithson.