Mr. Pomeroy expressed himself properly gratified, adding demurely that he would play no tricks.

‘No, hang me! no tricks!’ my lord cried somewhat alarmed.  ‘Not that—­’

’Not that I am likely to displace your lordship, her affections once gained,’ said Mr. Pomeroy.

He lowered his face to hide a smile of bitter derision, but he might have spared his pains; for Lord Almeric, never very wise, was blinded by vanity.  ‘No, I should think not,’ he said, with a conceit which came near to deserving the other’s contempt.  ’I should think not, Tommy.  Give me twenty minutes of a start, as Jack Wilkes says, and you may follow as you please.  I rather fancy I brought down the bird at the first shot?’

‘Certainly, my lord.’

‘I did, didn’t I?’

‘Most certainly, your lordship did,’ repeated the obsequious tutor; who, basking in the smiles of his host’s good-humour, began to think that things would run smoothly after all.  So the lady was toasted, and toasted again.  Nay, so great was Mr. Pomeroy’s complaisance and so easy his mood, he must needs have up three or four bottles of Brooks and Hellier that had lain in the cellar half a century—­the last of a batch—­and give her a third time in bumpers and no heel-taps.

But that opened Mr. Thomasson’s eyes.  He saw that Pomeroy had reverted to his idea of the night before, and was bent on making the young fop drunk, and exposing him in that state to his mistress; perhaps had the notion of pushing him on some rudeness that, unless she proved very compliant indeed, must ruin him for ever with her.  Three was their dinner hour; it was not yet four, yet already the young lord was flushed and a little flustered, talked fast, swore at Jarvey, and bragged of the girl lightly and without reserve.  By six o’clock, if something were not done, he would be unmanageable.

The tutor stood in no little awe of his host.  He had tremors down his back when he thought of his violence; nor was this dogged persistence in a design, as cruel as it was cunning, calculated to lessen the feeling.  But he had five thousand pounds at stake, a fortune on which he had been pluming himself since noon; it was no time for hesitation.  They were dining in the hall at the table at which they had played cards the night before, Jarvey and Lord Almeric’s servant attending them.  Between the table and the staircase was a screen.  The next time Lord Almeric’s glass was filled, the tutor, in reaching something, upset the glass and its contents over his own breeches, and amid the laughter of the other two retired behind the screen to be wiped.  There he slipped a crown into the servant’s hand, and whispered him to keep his master sober and he should have another.