Theseus, they were nothing to me.  They had sport, and never learned to write a bookkeeping hand.”  And now, Mary being out of the way for a little while, Fred, like any other strong dog who cannot slip his collar, had pulled up the staple of his chain and made a small escape, not of course meaning to go fast or far.  There could be no reason why he should not play at billiards, but he was determined not to bet.  As to money just now, Fred had in his mind the heroic project of saving almost all of the eighty pounds that Mr. Garth offered him, and returning it, which he could easily do by giving up all futile money-spending, since he had a superfluous stock of clothes, and no expense in his board.  In that way he could, in one year, go a good way towards repaying the ninety pounds of which he had deprived Mrs. Garth, unhappily at a time when she needed that sum more than she did now.  Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that on this evening, which was the fifth of his recent visits to the billiard-room, Fred had, not in his pocket, but in his mind, the ten pounds which he meant to reserve for himself from his half-year’s salary (having before him the pleasure of carrying thirty to Mrs. Garth when Mary was likely to be come home again)—­ he had those ten pounds in his mind as a fund from which he might risk something, if there were a chance of a good bet.  Why?  Well, when sovereigns were flying about, why shouldn’t he catch a few?  He would never go far along that road again; but a man likes to assure himself, and men of pleasure generally, what he could do in the way of mischief if he chose, and that if he abstains from making himself ill, or beggaring himself, or talking with the utmost looseness which the narrow limits of human capacity will allow, it is not because he is a spooney.  Fred did not enter into formal reasons, which are a very artificial, inexact way of representing the tingling returns of old habit, and the caprices of young blood:  but there was lurking in him a prophetic sense that evening, that when he began to play he should also begin to bet—­that he should enjoy some punch-drinking, and in general prepare himself for feeling “rather seedy” in the morning.  It is in such indefinable movements that action often begins.

But the last thing likely to have entered Fred’s expectation was that he should see his brother-in-law Lydgate—­of whom he had never quite dropped the old opinion that he was a prig, and tremendously conscious of his superiority—­looking excited and betting, just as he himself might have done.  Fred felt a shock greater than he could quite account for by the vague knowledge that Lydgate was in debt, and that his father had refused to help him; and his own inclination to enter into the play was suddenly checked.  It was a strange reversal of attitudes:  Fred’s blond face and blue eyes, usually bright and careless, ready to give attention to anything that held out a promise of amusement, looking involuntarily grave and almost embarrassed as if by the sight of something unfitting; while Lydgate, who had habitually an air of self-possessed strength, and a certain meditativeness that seemed to lie behind his most observant attention, was acting, watching, speaking with that excited narrow consciousness which reminds one of an animal with fierce eyes and retractile claws.