“I have eaten all the caviare and the pickles, and nearly finished a bottle of Madeira, waiting for you,” said Grog; “so, no dressing, but come in at once.” “Oh, dearest Lizzy!” cried Beecher, as they gained the porch, “just one word,--only one word,--to make me the happiest fellow in the world or the most miserable.” But Lizzy sprang up the stairs, and was in her room almost ere his words were uttered. “If I had bad but another moment,” muttered Beecher to himself, “just one moment more, I'd have shown her that I meant to turn over a new leaf,--that I was n't going to lead the life I have done. I 'd have told her--though, I suppose, old Grog would murder me if he knew it--of our grand martingale, and how we mean to smash the bank at Baden. No deception about that,--no 'cross' there. She can't bring up grooms and jockeys and stable-helpers against me now. It will all be done amongst ourselves,--a family party, and no mistake!” All things considered, Annesley Beecher, it was just as well for you that you had not that “one moment” you wished for. CHAPTER XXIV. A DEAD HEAT Some eight or ten days have elapsed since the scene we have Just recorded,--not one of whose incidents are we about to relate,--and we are still at Holbach. As happens so frequently in the working of a mathematical question, proofs are assumed without going over the demonstrations; so, in real life,--certain postulates being granted,--we arrive at conclusions which we regard as inevitable. We are at Holbach, but no longer strolling along its leaf-strewn alleys, or watching the laughing eddies of its circling river,--we are within doors. The scene is a small, most comfortably furnished chamber of the little inn, where an ample supper is laid out on a sideboard, a card-table occupying the centre of the room, at which two players are seated, their somewhat “charged” expressions and disordered dress indicating a prolonged combat,--a fact in part corroborated by the streak of pinkish dawn that has pierced between the shutters, and now blends with the sickly glare of the candles. Several packs of cards litter the floor around them, thrown there in that superstitious passion only gamblers understand, and a decanter and some glasses stand on the table beside the players, who are no others than our acquaintances Grog Davis and Paul Classon.