Carew was delighted with his son’s skill, though his wit was somewhat wasted on him.  “Why the deuce did you not play in the first game?” said he, when the party broke up to adjourn to the hazard-table.  “I suppose it was your confounded cunning” (and here his face grew dark, as though with some recollection of the past); “you wanted to see how they played before you pitted yourself against them—­did you?  How like, how like!”

“I had no money, Sir, until Parson Whymper lent me some.”

“Oh, that was it—­was it?” said the Squire.  “Well, well, that was not your fault, lad, nor shall it be mine—­here, catch,” and out of his breeches-pocket he took a roll of crumpled notes and flung them at him; then suddenly turned upon his heels, with what sounded like a muttered execration at his own folly.

Yorke did not risk this unexpected treasure on the chances of the dice, but retired to his own room.  It was a dainty chamber, as we have said, and offered in its appointments a curious contrast to his late sleeping-room in the keeper’s lodge.  He opened the door of communication to which the Squire had referred, and found himself in a sort of boudoir, in which, as in his own room, a good fire was burning.  By the lover of art-furniture, this latter apartment would have been pronounced a perfect gem.  Here also every article was of ebony, and flashed back the blaze from the red coals like dusky mirrors.  Yorke lit the candles—­huge waxen ones, such as the pious soul in peril sees in his mind’s eye, and promises to his saint—­and looked around him with curiosity.  Like the little Marchioness of Mr. Richard Swiveller, he had never seen such things, “except in shops;” or rather, he had seen single specimens of such exposed in windows of great furniture warehouses, rather as a wonder and a show than with any hope to tempt a purchaser.  On one hand stood an ebony cabinet, elaborately carved with fruit and flowers; it was divided into three parts, and their shut doors faced with plate-glass gave it the appearance of a tripartite altar with its sacred fire kindled.  A casket almost as large glowed close beside it, enriched with figures and landscapes, and with shining locks and hinges, as he afterward discovered, of solid gold.  A book-case of the same precious wood was filled with volumes bound in scarlet—­all French novels, superbly if not very decorously illustrated.  But the article which astonished the new tenant of this chamber most was the ebony escritoire that occupied its centre, with every thing set out for ornament or use that is seen on a lady’s writing-table.  It was impossible that such nick-nacks as he there beheld could be intended for male use, and still less for such men as were the Squire’s guests.  Did this chamber and its neighbor apartment usually own a female proprietress? and if so, why was he placed there?  This idea by no means alarmed the young landscape-painter, who had no more mauvaise honte, nor dislike to adventures of gallantry,