Gerald jumped up to do it with tolerable alacrity. I sat still, preferring to help myself, when he should have attended to his father--if his father it was. I felt more easy now that I had those papers in my pocket. The more I thought of it, the more certain I became that they were the object of whatever deviltry was on foot; and that possession of them gave me the whip-hand. My young gentleman might snarl and show his teeth, but the prize had escaped him. Perhaps I was a little too confident; a little too contemptuous of my opponent; a little too proud of the firmness with which I had taken at one and the same time the responsibility and the whip-hand. A creak of the board behind the screen roused me from my thoughts. It fell upon my ear trumpet-tongued: it contained, I know not what note of warning. I glanced up with a conviction that I was napping, and looked instinctively towards the young man. He was busy at the tray, his back to me. Relieved of my fear of something--perhaps a desperate attack upon my pocket, I was removing my eyes, when I caught sight of his reflection in a small mirror beyond him. What was he busy about? Nothing. Absolutely nothing, at the moment. He was standing motionless--I could fancy him breathless also--a listening expression on his face; which seemed to me to have faded to a greyish tinge. His left hand was clasping a half-filled tumbler; the other was at his waistcoat pocket. So he stood during perhaps a second, a small lamp upon the tray before him illumining his handsome figure; then his eyes, glancing up, met the reflection of mine in the mirror. Swiftly as thought could pass from brain to limb, the hand which had been resting in the pocket flashed with a clatter among the glasses; and turning as quickly, he brought one of the latter to the chess-table, and set it down unsteadily. What had I seen! Actually nothing. Just what Gerald had been doing. Yet my heart was going as many strokes to the minute as a losing crew. I rose abruptly. "Wait a moment, sir," I said, as the elder man laid his hand upon the glass, "I don't think that Gerald has mixed this quite as you like it." He had already lifted it to his lips. I looked from him to Gerald. The young man's colour, though he faced me hardily, shifted, and he seemed to be swallowing a succession of oversized fives-balls. But his eyes met mine in a vicious kind of smile that was not without its gleam of triumph. I was persuaded that all was right before his father said so. "Perhaps you have mixed for me?" I suggested pleasantly. "No!" he answered in sullen defiance. He filled a glass with something--perhaps it was water--and drank it, his back towards me. He had not spoken so much as a single word to me before.