‘Two days!’ my lord cried, reeling slightly; the last glass had been too much for him.  ‘We’ll be married in two days.  See if we are not.’

‘The Act notwithstanding?’ Mr. Pomeroy said, with a sneer.

‘Oh, sink the Act!’ his lordship retorted.  ’But where’s—­where’s the door?  I shall go,’ he continued, gazing vacantly about him, ’go to her at once, and tell her—­tell her I shall marry her!  You—­you fellows are hiding the door!  You are—­you are all jealous!  Oh, yes!  Such a shape and such eyes!  You are jealous, hang you!’

Mr. Pomeroy leaned forward and leered at the tutor.  ’Shall we let him go?’ he whispered.  ’It will mend somebody’s chance.  What say you, Parson?  You stand next.  Make it six thousand instead of five, and I’ll see to it.’

‘Let me go to her!’ my lord hiccoughed.  He was standing, holding by the back of a chair.  ’I tell you—­I—­where is she?  You are jealous!  That’s what you are!  Jealous!  She is fond of me—­pretty charmer—­and I shall go to her!’

But Mr. Thomasson shook his head; not so much because he shrank from the outrage which the other contemplated with a grin, as because he now wished Lord Almeric to succeed.  He thought it possible and even likely that the girl, dazzled by his title, would be willing to take the young sprig of nobility.  And the influence of the Doyley family was great.

He shook his head therefore, and Mr. Pomeroy rebuffed, solaced himself with a couple of glasses of punch.  After that, Mr. Thomasson pleaded fatigue as his reason for declining to take a hand at any game whatever, and my lord continuing to maunder and flourish and stagger, the host reluctantly suggested bed; and going to the door bawled for Jarvey and his lordship’s man.  They came, but were found to be incapable of standing when apart.  The tutor and Mr. Pomeroy, therefore, took my lord by the arms and partly shoved and partly supported him to his room.

There was a second bed in the chamber.  ’You had better tumble in there, Parson,’ said Mr. Pomeroy.  ‘What say you?  Will’t do?’

‘Finely,’ Tommy answered.  ‘I am obliged to you.’  And when they had jointly loosened his lordship’s cravat, and removed his wig and set the cool jug of small beer within his reach, Mr. Pomeroy bade the other a curt good-night, and took himself off.

Mr. Thomasson waited until his footsteps ceased to echo in the gallery, and then, he scarcely knew why, he furtively opened the door and peeped out.  All was dark; and save for the regular tick of the pendulum on the stairs, the house was still.  Mr. Thomasson, wondering which way Julia’s room lay, stood listening until a stair creaked; and then, retiring precipitately, locked his door.  Lord Almeric, in the gloom of the green moreen curtains that draped his huge four-poster, had fallen into a drunken slumber.  The shadow of his wig, which Pomeroy had clapped on the wig-stand by the bed, nodded on the wall, as the draught moved the tails.  Mr. Thomasson shivered, and, removing the candle—­as was his prudent habit of nights—­to the hearth, muttered that a goose was walking over his grave, undressed quickly, and jumped into bed.