Mr. Thomasson looked at the gallery above, and thence, and slyly, to his companions and back again to the gallery; and swallowed something that rose in his throat.  At length he seemed to make up his mind to speak the truth, though when he did so it was in a voice little above a whisper.  ‘Fifty thousand,’ he said, and looked guiltily round him.

Lord Almeric rose from his chair as if on springs.  ‘Oh, I protest!’ he said.  ‘You are roasting us.  Fifty thousand!  It’s a bite?’

But Mr. Thomasson nodded.  ‘Fifty thousand,’ he repeated softly.  ’Fifty thousand.’

‘Pounds?’ gasped my lord.  ‘The Little Masterson?’

The tutor nodded again; and without asking leave, with a dogged air unlike his ordinary bearing when he was in the company of those above him, he drew a decanter towards him, and filling a glass with a shaking hand raised it to his lips and emptied it.  The three were on their feet round the table, on which several candles, luridly lighting up their faces, still burned; while others had flickered down, and smoked in the guttering sockets, among the empty bottles and the litter of cards.  In one corner of the table the lees of wine had run upon the oak, and dripped to the floor, and formed a pool, in which a broken glass lay in fragments beside the overturned chair.  An observant eye might have found on the panels below the gallery the vacant nails and dusty lines whence Lelys and Knellers, Cuyps and Hondekoeters had looked down on two generations of Pomeroys.  But in the main the disorder of the scene centred in the small table and the three men standing round it; a lighted group, islanded in the shadows of the hall.

Mr. Pomeroy waited with impatience until Mr. Thomasson lowered his glass.  Then, ‘Let us have the story,’ he said.  ’A guinea to a China orange the fool is tricking us.’

The tutor shook his head, and turned to Lord Almeric.  ’You know Sir George Soane,’ he said.  ‘Well, my lord, she is his cousin.’

‘Oh, tally, tally!’ my lord cried.  ‘You—­you are romancing, Tommy!’

’And under the will of Sir George’s grandfather she takes fifty thousand pounds, if she make good her claim within a certain time from to-day.’

‘Oh, I say, you are romancing!’ my lord repeated, more feebly.  ’You know, you really should not!  It is too uncommon absurd, Tommy.’

‘It’s true!’ said Mr. Thomasson.

‘What?  That this porter’s wench at Pembroke has fifty thousand pounds?’ cried Mr. Pomeroy.  ‘She is the porter’s wench, isn’t she?’ he continued.  Something had sobered him.  His eyes shone, and the veins stood out on his forehead.  But his manner was concise and harsh, and to the point.

Mr. Thomasson. glanced at him stealthily, as one gamester scrutinises another over the cards.  ’She is Masterson, the porter’s, foster-child,’ he said.

‘But is it certain that she has the money?’ the other cried rudely.  ’Is it true, man?  How do you know?  Is it public property?’