angry with Captain Vignolles because that gentleman had, under the circumstances, been a little anxious about it.  It certainly was not singular that he should have been so, as Captain Scarborough had been turned out of more than one club in consequence of his inability to pay his card debts.  As he went home to his lodgings, with Captain Vignolles’s champagne in his head, he felt very much as he had done that night when he attacked Harry Annesley.  But he met no one whom he could consider as an enemy, and therefore got himself to bed, and slept off the fumes of the drink.

On that day he was to return to Tretton; but, when he awoke, he felt that before he did so he must endeavor to make some arrangements for paying the amount due at the end of the week.  He had already borrowed twenty pounds from Mr. Grey, and had intended to repay him out of the sum which his father had given him; but that sum now was gone, and he was again nearly penniless.  In this emergency there was nothing left to him but again to go to Mr. Grey.

As he was shown up the stairs to the lawyer’s room he did feel thoroughly ashamed of himself.  Mr. Grey knew all the circumstances of his career, and it would be necessary now to tell him of this last adventure.  He did tell himself, as he dragged himself up the stairs, that for such a one as he was there could be no redemption.  “It would be better that I should go back,” he said, “and throw myself from the Monument.”  But yet he felt that if Florence Mountjoy could still be his, there might yet be a hope that things would go well with him.

Mr. Grey began by expressing surprise at seeing Captain Scarborough in town.  “Oh yes, I have come up.  It does not matter why, because, as usual, I have put my foot in it.  It was at my father’s bidding; but that does not matter.”

“How have you put your foot in it?” said the attorney.  There was one way in which the captain was always “putting” both his “feet in it;” but, since he had been turned out of his clubs, Mr. Grey did not think that that way was open to him.

“The old story.”

“Do you mean that you have been gambling again?”

“Yes;—­I met a friend last night and he asked me to his rooms.”

“And he had the cards ready?”

“Of course he had.  What else would any one have ready for me?”

“And he won that remnant of the twenty pounds which you borrowed from me, and therefore you want another?” Hereupon the captain shook his head.  “What is it, then, that you do want?”

“Such a man as I met,” said the captain, “would not be content with the remnant of twenty pounds.  I had received fifty from my father, and had intended to call here and pay you.”

“That has all gone too?”

“Yes, indeed.  And in addition to that I have given him a note for two hundred and twenty-seven pounds, which I must take up in a week’s time.  Otherwise I must disappear again,—­and this time forever.”