thereby.  I have never known a man who took his ill-luck with such a stoical nonchalance.  Not so while the heat was on.  As I write, a most ridiculous recollection rises of Charles dragging his Lordship and me and all who were with him to that part of the course where the race was highest, where he would act like a madman; blowing and perspiring, and whipping and swearing all at a time, and rising up and down as if the horse was throwing him.

At Newmarket I had the good—­or ill-fortune to meet that incorrigible rake and profligate, my Lord of March and Ruglen.  For him the goddess of Chance had smiled, and he was in the most complaisant humour.  I was presented to his Grace, the Duke of Grafton, whose name I had no reason to love, and invited to Wakefield Lodge.  We went instead, Mr. Fox and I, to Ampthill, Lord Ossory’s seat, with a merry troop.  And then we had more racing; and whist and quinze and pharaoh and hazard, until I was obliged to write another draft upon Mr. Dix to settle the wails:  and picquet in the travelling-chaise all the way to London.  Dining at Brooks’s, we encountered Fitzpatrick and Comyn and my Lord Carlisle.

“Now how much has Charles borrowed of you, Mr. Carvel?” demanded Fitzpatrick, as we took our seats.

“I’ll lay ten guineas that Charles has him mortgaged this day month, though he owns as much land as William Penn, and is as rich as Fordyce.”

Comyn demanded where the devil I had been, though he knew perfectly.  He was uncommonly silent during dinner, and then asked me if I had heard the news.  I told him I had heard none.  He took me by the sleeve, to the quiet amusement of the company, and led me aside.

“Curse you, Richard,” says be; “you have put me in such a temper that I vow I’ll fling you over.  You profess to love her, and yet you go betting to Newmarket and carousing to Ampthill when she is ill.”

“Ill!” I said, catching my breath.

“Ay!  That hurts, does it?  Yes, ill, I say.  She was missed at Lady Pembroke’s that Friday you had the scene with her, and at Lady Ailesbury’s on Saturday.  On Monday morning, when I come to you for tidings, you are off watching Charles make an ass of himself at Newmarket.”

“And how is she now, Comyn?” I asked, catching him by the arm.

“You may go yourself and see, and be cursed, Richard Carvel.  She is in trouble, and you are pleasure-seeking in the country.  Damme! you deserve richly to lose her.”

Calling for my greatcoat, and paying no heed to the jeers of the company for leaving before the toasts and the play, I fairly ran to Arlington Street.  I was in a passion of remorse.  Comyn had been but just.  Granting, indeed, that she had refused to marry me, was that any reason why I should desert my life-long friend and playmate?  A hundred little tokens of her affection for me rose to mind, and last of all that rescue from Castle Yard in the face of all Mayfair.  And in that hour of darkness the conviction that something was wrong came back upon me with redoubled force.  Her lack of colour, her feverish actions, and the growing slightness of her figure, all gave me a pang, as I connected them with that scene on the balcony over the Park.