As the game went on, however, Pompus exhibited his usual feebleness, and things began to look very black indeed. In the third round of trumps, Master Walter's memory left him sudden as an extinguished taper. It is sad to have to say it of so excellent a player, but he recollected nothing whatever, except that, if he lost that rubber, it would be an addition of three hundred pounds to the sum he already owed Captain Wobegon. It was his turn to play, and he was third hand. He had the king and ten of trumps. The ace had been played; ay, he remembered that after a struggle, and the knave too. Yes, his left-hand adversary had played the knave. Should he finesse his ten or not? That was the question, upon the decision of which depended some five hundred pounds. Whist is not always a game of pleasure. Master Walter finessed the ten. “Thousand devils!” cried Derrick with a tremendous imprecation, “why, the queen was _turned up_ on your left, lad: you have thrown away the game.” And it was so. Walter Lisgard did not speak a word; but having compared his note-book with that of Captain Wobegon, retired into a little office out of the back drawing-room, where the secretary of the _Landrails_ entered the members' somewhat complicated little accounts with one another in a very business-like-looking ledger. “You have had a bad night of it for _you_, sir,” remarked this gentleman quietly; “you generally hold your own.” “Yes. What is the cursed total?” “Eighteen hundred.” “Ralph Derrick,” said Walter Lisgard, as the two walked up St James's Street towards their lodgings for bath and breakfasts, but scarcely for bed, since the morning was already far advanced--“if any horse but _Menelaus_ wins the race, I am a ruined man.” CHAPTER VI. MR WITHERS WITHDRAWS HIMSELF. |WHEN Derrick and the captain met at the breakfast-table upon that Derby morning, there was a note for the latter waiting by his plate. It had been brought over from the _Turf Hotel_ with apologies, having been detained there by mistake, “through everybody being so busy,” for at least a week. As he turned it moodily over without opening it, Ralph saw that it had the Mirk postmark. “You have a letter from home, I see, lad; lucky dog!” “Yes, very lucky,” replied the young man cynically, as he ran his eye over the contents; “worse than my infernal luck of last night, and only less than the misfortune I am looking for to-day is the news in this letter.” “How is that, lad?” “Well, you will hear some day.”--Here he took the note, and slowly tore it lengthways into thin strips, and then across, so that it lay in a hundred fragments.--“But it's a secret, at least it was until a week ago, but being in a woman's hands, of course she let it slip;” and Master Walter looked as near to “ugly” as it was possible for his handsome face to go. “I fancied your folks at home were unaware of your having intended to be at the _Turf Hotel_, and rather thought you were with your regiment, like a good boy.”