on his way to Buston, he did bethink himself where these places were to be found.  His throat was parched, and the thirst upon him was extreme.  Cards were the weapons he had used.  He had played ecarte, piquet, whist, and baccarat, with an occasional night of some foolish game such as cribbage or vingt-et-un.  Though he had always lost, he had always played with men who had played honestly.  There is much that is, in truth, dishonest even in honest play.  A man who can keep himself sober after dinner plays with one who flusters himself with drink.  The man with a trained memory plays with him who cannot remember a card.  The cool man plays with the impetuous; the man who can hold his tongue with him who cannot but talk; the man whose practised face will tell no secrets with him who loses a point every rubber by his uncontrolled grimaces.  And then there is the man who knows the game, and plays with him who knows it not at all.  Of course, the cool, the collected, the thoughtful, the practised,—­they who have given up their whole souls to the study of cards,—­will play at a great advantage, which in their calculations they do not fail to recognize.  See the man standing by and watching the table, and leaving all the bets he can on A and B as against C and D; and, however ignorant you may be, you will soon become sure that A and B know the game, whereas C and D are simply infants.  That is all fair and acknowledged; but looking at it from a distance, as you lie under your apple-trees in your orchard, far from the shout of “Two by honors,” you will come to doubt the honesty of making your income after such a fashion.

Such as it is, Mountjoy sighed for it bitterly,—­sighed for it, but could not see where it was to be found.  He had a gentleman’s horror of those resorts in gin-shops, or kept by the disciples of gin-shops, where he would surely be robbed,—­which did not appal him,—­but robbed in bad company.  Thinking of all this, he went up to London late in the afternoon, and spent an uncomfortable evening in town.  It was absolutely innocent as regarded the doings of the night itself, but was terrible to him.  There was a slow drizzling rain; but not the less after dinner at his hotel he started off to wander through the streets.  With his great-coat and his umbrella he was almost hidden; and as he passed through Pall Mall, up St. James’s Street, and along Piccadilly, he could pause and look in at the accustomed door.  He saw men entering whom he knew, and knew that within five minutes they could be seated at their tables.  “I had an awfully heavy time of it last night,” one said to another as he went up the steps; and Mountjoy, as he heard the words, envied the speaker.  Then he passed back and went again a tour of all the clubs.  What had he done that he, like a poor Peri, should be unable to enter the gates of all these paradises?  He had now in his pocket fifty pounds.  Could he have been made absolutely certain that he would have lost it, he would have gone into any paradise and have staked his money with that certainty.