“Ah!” cried Mrs. Yorke, shaking her head.

“Yes; you were right again, mother, there—­the whole affair is a tribute to your sagacity, if you will only permit me to narrate it to you.  I say that this fellow Fane, when walking with his patron’s brother, stupid Jack, had me pointed out to him in town one day as the man who had ‘pulled him through,’ as he called it.  Can you imagine how even such a fool as he could have been so mad?  It was an act of suicide, which, so far as I know, fools never commit.  Well, Fane was pretty certain of the identity of your humble servant, which he was, moreover, anxious to establish, because I had beaten him at pool, and given him the rough side of my tongue.”

“Oh, Dick, Dick! have skillful hand and ready speech been only given you to make enemies?”

Richard laughed, and lighted a cigar.

“Well, sometimes, mother, the most prudent of us are carried away by our own genius.  I am told that even you, for instance, lost your temper upon a certain occasion down at Crompton—­gave a ‘piece of your mind’ to my father, which, it seems, he took as a sample of the whole of it.  There, don’t be angry:  the provocation, it must be allowed, was in your case greater than mine; but then you pique yourself on your self-control!  However, this Fane did hate me, and told the chaplain of his suspicions; the good parson was my friend, however, and all might have gone well, but for this oaf—­this idiot Jack—­coming down to Carew’s in person.  He could never get any coin out of ‘Fred,’ it appears, by letter; or, perhaps, he couldn’t ‘write!’ But there he was in the big drawing-room when I went in last night, and Carew saw his jaw drop at the sight of me.  He had not the sense to shut it even afterward, though I told him he had made a mistake, and gave him every chance.  I could have persuaded him, indeed, out of his own identity—­and much more mine—­only that he appealed to Fane; and then the game was up.  It would have made me laugh had I not been so savage.  Carew turned us both out of the house together.  His love of truth would not permit him, it seems, to harbor us.  So Jack and I went to the inn, played ecarte all night, and parted the best of friends this morning.  But I’ll be even with that fellow Fane—­yes; by Heaven, I will, if it’s a score of years hence!”

Perhaps the light satiric tone which the young man had used throughout his narrative was little in accordance with the feelings which really agitated him; but, at all events, his last few words were full of malignant passion.

“Be even, Dick, by all means, with every body,” observed Mrs. Yorke, coolly, “but do not indulge yourself in revenge.  Revenge is like a game at battle-door, wherein one can never tell who will have the last hit.”

“At the same time, it is one of those few luxuries which those who have least to lose can best afford,” said Richard, with the air of a moralist.