“Ye play primero on a system!” quoth Sir Michael Isherwood in deep amazement.

“Yes!” replied the young man.  “I have played on it for years ... and it is infallible, ’pon my honor.”

In the meanwhile the doors leading to the second room had been thrown open; serving men and women advanced carrying trays on which were displayed glasses and bottles filled with Rhenish wine and Spanish canary and muscadel, also buttered ale and mead and hypocras for the ladies.

Editha did not occupy herself with serving but the florid woman was most attentive to the guests.  She darted in and out between the tables, managing her unwieldy farthingale with amazing skill.  She poured out the wines, and offered tarts and dishes of anchovies and of cheese, also strange steaming beverages lately imported into England called coffee and chocolate.

The women liked the latter, and supped it out of mugs, with many little cries of astonishment and appreciation of its sugariness.

The men drank heavily, chiefly of the heady Spanish wines; they ate the anchovies and cheese with their fingers, and continually called for more refreshments.

Play was of necessity interrupted.  Groups of people eating and drinking congregated round the tables.  The men mostly discussed various phases of the game; there was so little else for idlers to talk about these days.  No comedies or other diversions, neither cock-fighting nor bear-baiting, and abuse of my Lord Protector and his rigorous disciplinarian laws had already become stale.

The women talked dress and coiffure, the new puffs, the fanciful pinners.

But at the center table Segrave still sat, refusing all refreshment, waiting with obvious impatience for the ending of this unwelcome interval.  When first he found himself isolated in the crowd, he had counted over with febrile eagerness the money which lay in a substantial heap before him.

“Saved!” he muttered between his teeth, speaking to himself like one who is dreaming, “saved!  Thank God! ...  Two hundred and fifty pounds ... only another fifty and I’ll never touch these cursed cards again ... only another fifty....”

He buried his face in his hands; the moisture stood out in heavy drops on his forehead.  He looked all round him with ever-growing impatience.

“My God! why don’t they come back! ...  Another fifty pounds ... and I can put the money back ... before it has been missed....  Oh! why don’t they come back!”

Quite a tragedy expressed in those few muttered words, in the trembling hands, the damp forehead.  Money taken from an unsuspecting parent, guardian or master, which?  What matter?  A tragedy of ordinary occurrence even in those days when social inequalities were being abolished by act of Parliament.

In the meanwhile Lord Walterton, halting of speech, insecure of foothold, after his third bumper of heady sack, was explaining to Sir Michael Isherwood the mysteries of his system for playing the noble game of primero.