He smoked his pipe out, and by that time it had grown nearly dark.  He was still looking out upon the faint outlines of the view, and thinking angrily what a little bit of luck at the races would do for many a man who probably did not want it half so much as he.  Vague and sombre as his thoughts were, they had, like the darkening landscape outside, shape enough to define their general character.  Bitter and impious they were—­as those of egotistic men naturally are in suffering.  And after brooding, and muttering by fits and starts, he said: 

“How many tens and hundreds of thousands of pounds will change hands at Heckleston next week; and not a shilling in all the change and shuffle will stick to me!  How many a fellow would sell himself, like Dr. Faustus, just for the knowledge of the name of the winner!  But he’s no fool, and does not buy his own.”

Something caught his eye; something moving on the wall.  The fire was lighted, and cast a flickering and gigantic shadow upward; the figure of a man standing behind Sir Bale Mardykes, on whose shoulder he placed a lean hand.  Sir Bale turned suddenly about, and saw Philip Feltram.  He was looking dark and stern, and did not remove his hand from his shoulder as he peered into the Baronet’s face with his deep-set mad eyes.

“Ha, Philip, upon my soul!” exclaimed Sir Bale, surprised.  “How time flies!  It seems only this minute since I saw the boat a mile and a half away from the shore.  Well—­yes; there has been time; it is dark now.  Ha, ha!  I assure you, you startled me.  Won’t you take something?  Do.  Shall I touch the bell?”

“You have been troubled about those mortgages.  I told you I should pay them off, I thought.”

Here there was a pause, and Sir Bale looked hard in Feltram’s face.  If he had been in his ordinary spirits, or perhaps in some of his haunts less solitary than Mardykes, he would have laughed; but here he had grown unlike himself, gloomy and credulous, and was, in fact, a nervous man.

Sir Bale smiled, and shook his head dismally.

“It is very kind of you, Feltram; the idea shows a kindly disposition.  I know you would do me a kindness if you could.”

As Sir Bale, each looking in the other’s eyes, repeated in this sentence the words “kind,” “kindly,” “kindness,” a smile lighted Feltram’s face with at each word an intenser light; and Sir Bale grew sombre in its glare; and when he had done speaking, Feltram’s face also on a sudden darkened.

“I have found a fortune-teller in Cloostedd Wood.  Look here.”

And he drew from his pocket a leathern purse, which he placed on the table in his hand; and Sir Bale heard the pleasant clink of coin in it.

“A fortune-teller!  You don’t mean to say she gave you that?” said Sir Bale.

Feltram smiled again, and nodded.

“It was the custom to give the fortuneteller a trifle.  It is a great improvement making her fee you,” observed Sir Bale, with an approach to his old manner.