“Why now,” said the captain once, regarding his winnings with a face of perfect ruefulness, “’tis proven that what we seek eludes us, and what we don’t value comes to us!  Here am I, the last man in the world to court success this way, and here am I more winner than if I had played with care and attention.”

Tom once mentioned, to another officer, Captain Falconer’s luck at cards as an instance of fortune befriending one who despised her favours in that way.

“Blood, sir!” exclaimed the officer.  “Jack Falconer may have a mind and taste above gaming as a pleasure, for aught I know.  But I would I had his skill with the cards.  ’Tis no pastime with him, but a livelihood.  Don’t you know the man is as poor as a church-mouse, but for what he gets upon the green table?”

This revelation a little dampened our esteem for the captain’s elevation of intellect, but I’ll take my oath of it, he was really above gaming as a way of entertaining his mind, however he resorted to it as a means of filling his purse.

Of course Tom’s friendly association with him was before there was sure cause to suspect his intentions regarding Margaret.  His manner toward her was the model of proper civility.  He was a hundred times more amiable and jocular with Fanny, whom he treated with the half-familiar pleasantry of an elderly man for a child; petting her with such delicacy as precluded displeasure on either her part or mine.  He pretended great dejection upon learning that her heart was already engaged; and declared that his only consolation lay in the fact that the happy possessor of the prize was myself:  for which we both liked him exceedingly.  Toward Mrs. Faringfield, too, he used a chivalrous gallantry as complimentary to her husband as to the lady.  Only between him and Margaret was there the distance of unvaried formality.

And yet we ought to have seen how matters stood.  For now Margaret, though she had so little apparent cordiality for the captain, had ceased to value the admiration of the other officers, and had substituted a serene indifference for the animated interest she had formerly shown toward the gaieties of the town.  And the captain, too, we learned, had the reputation of an inveterate conqueror of women; yet he had exhibited a singular callousness to the charms of the ladies of New York.  He had been three months in the town, and his name had not been coupled with that of any woman there.  We might have surmised from this a concealed preoccupation.  And, moreover, there was my first reading of his countenance, the night of the Morris ball; this I had not forgotten, yet I ignored it, or else I shut my eyes to my inevitable inferences, because I could see no propriety in any possible interference from me.

One evening in December there was a drum at Colonel Philipse’s town house, which Margaret did not attend.  She had mentioned, as reason for absenting herself, a cold caught a few nights previously, through her bare throat being exposed to a chill wind by the accidental falling of her cloak as she walked to the coach after Mrs. Colden’s rout.  As the evening progressed toward hilarity, I observed that Tom Faringfield became restless and gloomy.  At last he approached me, with a face strangely white, and whispered: