“That’s like her father, old Cheriton.  I knew him at the club—­one of the old sort of squires; married his second wife at sixty and buried her at eighty.  Old ‘Claret and Piquet,’ they called him; had more children under the rose than any man in Devonshire.  I saw him playing half-crown points the week before he died.  It’s in the blood.  What’s George’s weight?—­ah, ha!”

“It’s no laughing matter, Brandwhite.  There’s time for a hundred up before dinner if you care for a game, Winlow?”

The sound of chairs drawn back, of footsteps, and the closing of a door.  George was alone again, a spot of red in either of his cheeks.  Those vague stirrings of chivalry and aspiration were gone, and gone that sense of well-earned ease.  He got up, came out of his corner, and walked to and fro on the tiger-skin before the fire.  He lit a cigarette, threw it away, and lit another.

Skating on thin ice!  That would not stop him!  Their gossip would not stop him, nor their sneers; they would but send him on the faster!

He threw away the second cigarette.  It was strange for him to go to the drawing-room at this hour of the day, but he went.

Opening the door quietly, he saw the long, pleasant room lighted with tall oil-lamps, and Mrs. Bellew seated at the piano, singing.  The tea-things were still on a table at one end, but every one had finished.  As far away as might be, in the embrasure of the bay-window, General Pendyce and Bee were playing chess.  Grouped in the centre of the room, by one of the lamps, Lady Maiden, Mrs. Winlow, and Mrs. Brandwhite had turned their faces towards the piano, and a sort of slight unwillingness or surprise showed on those faces, a sort of “We were having a most interesting talk; I don’t think we ought to have been stopped” expression.

Before the fire, with his long legs outstretched, stood Gerald Pendyce.  And a little apart, her dark eyes fixed on the singer, and a piece of embroidery in her lap, sat Mrs. Pendyce, on the edge of whose skirt lay Roy, the old Skye terrier.

    “But had I wist, before I lost,
          That love had been sae ill to win;
     I had lockt my heart in a case of gowd
          And pinn’d it with a siller pin.... 
     O waly! waly! but love be bonny
          A little time while it is new,
     But when ’tis auld, it waxeth cauld,
          And fades awa’ like morning dew!”

This was the song George heard, trembling and dying to the chords of the fine piano that was a little out of tune.

He gazed at the singer, and though he was not musical, there came a look into his eyes that he quickly hid away.

A slight murmur occurred in the centre of the room, and from the fireplace Gerald called out, “Thanks; that’s rippin!”

The voice of General Pendyce rose in the bay-window:  “Check!”

Mrs. Pendyce, taking up her embroidery, on which a tear had dropped, said gently: