“I dare say.”

“I think you will.  It may be that the having to pay you will keep me for a while from the gambling-table.”

“You don’t look for more than that?”

“I am an unfortunate man, Mr. Grey.  There is one thing that would cure me, but that one thing is beyond my reach.”

“Some woman?”

“Well;—­it is a woman.  I think I could keep my money for the sake of her comfort.  But never mind.  Good-bye, Mr. Grey.  I think I shall remember what you have done for me.”  Then he went and sent the identical check to Captain Vignolles, with the shortest and most uncourteous epistle: 

“DEAR SIR,—­I send you your money.  Send back the note.

“Yours.  M. SCARBOROUGH.”

“I hardly expected this,” said the captain to himself as he pocketed the check,—­“at any rate not so soon.  ‘Nothing venture, nothing have.’  That Moody is a slow coach, and will never do anything.  I thought there’d be a little money about with him for a time.”  Then the captain turned over in his mind that night’s good work with the self-satisfied air of an industrious professional worker.

But Mr. Grey was not so well satisfied with himself, and determined for a while to say nothing to Dolly of the two hundred and twenty-seven pounds which he had undoubtedly risked by the loan.  But his mind misgave him before he went to sleep, and he felt that he could not be comfortable till he had made a clean breast of it.  During the evening Dolly had been talking to him of all the troubles of all the Carrolls,—­how Amelia would hardly speak to her father or her mother because of her injured lover, and was absolutely insolent to her, Dolly, whenever they met; how Sophia had declared that promises ought to be kept, and that Amelia should be got rid of; and how Mrs. Carroll had told her in confidence that Carroll pere had come home the night before drunker than usual, and had behaved most abominably.  But Mr. Grey had attended very little to all this, having his mind preoccupied with the secret of the money which he had lent.

Therefore Dolly did not put out her candle, and arrayed herself for bed in the costume with which she was wont to make her nocturnal visits.  She had perceived that her father had something on his mind which it would be necessary that he should tell.  She was soon summoned, and having seated herself on the bed, began the conversation:  “I knew you would want me to-night.”

“Why so?”

“Because you’ve got something to tell.  It’s about Mr. Barry.”

“No indeed.”

“That’s well.  Just at this moment I seem to care about Mr. Barry more than any other trouble.  But I fear that he has forgotten me altogether,—­which is not complimentary.”

“Mr. Barry will turn up all in proper time,” said her father.  “I have got nothing to say about Mr. Barry just at present, so if you are love-lorn you had better go to bed.”