At this time, however, he had been for some months undergoing a run of ill-luck. The year had opened badly by the failure of a bubble company in which he was deeply interested; then, again, men were fighting shy of him at billiards, and it cost him more work for a sovereign than it was worth, and guinea points at whist were becoming rare events even amongst the most reckless _habitues_ of the club; to climax his misfortunes, he had made a very losing book on the Derby, and although he paid it up-- for to be a defaulter would have ruined him in his set--he had to leave London early in the season in consequence of not having the wherewithal to prosecute the war. When he had gone away at the end of May he told Tom Hartshorne that he would be detained away on the continent on business for months; and yet here he was back again before the end of July. The fact was he came back money-hunting, and was so pressed now that he hardly knew where to turn. He had made up his mind that unless he married a fortune, discovered a gold mine, or tumbled into some wonderful luck, that his "little game," as he expressed it, would be "all up." He was glad to meet Tom Hartshorne so very opportunely at the present juncture, for he thought that he might be put in the way of some plan for changing events--and at the worst a little good card playing in the evening might place him in the position of being able "to look about him." Punctually at seven o'clock he showed himself up at Lane's Hotel, where some half-a-dozen men of Tom's regiment were assembled in a cosy little room up-stairs, well lighted, and with snow-white-cloth-covered-table, all duly prepared and laid out for the contemplated feast. Dragoon officers or "Plungers"--indeed, all cavalry men--are pretty much alike, and unlike the remainder of the Army List. The mild, "gushing" comet, dashing "sub," and massive captain, full-fledged and silky as to hair and drooping moustache--not forgetting general apathy of expression--of one troop, or regiment, resemble those of another, even as the proverbial "two peas," and it would sorely tax one's powers of diagnosis to discriminate between the members of a party like those assembled for the present "quiet little dinner, you know."