"Whatever made you get up so early?" he asked, looking at me curiously. "Gave me quite a turn when I heard that you were down and alone with Grumps; and Cis was in an awful funk. We were afraid that you might let out something about last night--accidentally, of course; and then there would have been the deuce to pay and no mistake. James, take my plate and bring me a brandy-and-soda. Take care the doctor doesn't see you." "Whose servant is James?" I asked, as he disappeared--"yours or the doctor's?" "The doctor imagines that he's his, I suppose; but he gets a lot more from Cis and me than Grumps pays him," de Cartienne explained carelessly. "I knew him before he came here, and got him to apply for the situation by promising to double his wages." "And the advantages?" I asked. "Obvious enough, I should think. You've seen some of them already, and you'll see some more before you've been here long." "I daresay. Perhaps it would be as well for me to tell you, de Cartienne, that what I have seen I don't like." "Very likely not," he answered carelessly. "I thought directly I saw you that you were a bit of a prig--I beg your pardon, I should say, rather strait-laced. Still, I don't suppose you'll think it worth your while to interfere. You can go your way and Cis and I can go ours." "That would make it a little dull for me," I said slowly. "Perhaps I am not quite so strait-laced as you seem to think. I suppose you would teach me how to play cards, if I desired to learn?" "Oh, certainly! And how to use this also," he remarked, drawing a latchkey from his pocket and swinging it carelessly backwards and forwards. "I think I will learn, then," I answered. "After all, this place would be ghastly dull if I didn't do as you fellows do." He looked at me searchingly out of his keen dark eyes, but I sipped my coffee leisurely and seemed to be quite unconscious of his scrutiny. Apparently he was satisfied, for I saw the hard lines of his mouth relax a little and he smiled--a disagreeable smile of contemptuous triumph. "I've no doubt you'll prove an apt pupil," he remarked. "Have you finished? If so, we'll go and have a cigarette in my room before we start work with Grumps." "Does the doctor allow smoking?" I asked. "To tell you the truth, Morton, we've never asked him. What the eye doesn't see, the heart doesn't grieve over, you know. We go on that principle, and smoke in our rooms with the doors shut and windows open. Come along!" CHAPTER XXIX. A DINNER-PARTY SUB ROSA.