“DEAR FRANK,--A line to remind you of to-morrow night. You will be expected any time after nine.--Yours always, “H. L.” This reminder referred to a bachelor’s supper which Mr. Lowther had arranged at his lodgings; a party at which there was to be what the host called a quiet rubber. A rubber played with that deadly quiet which attends the science of whist when heavy amounts tremble in the balance, and a sum that a poor man would call a fortune may depend on the player’s judicious choice between a five and a seven. Such a rubber as that which the well-known Sir Robert was once concluding, when, just as he pondered over his two last cards, a thoughtless looker-on happened to break the solemn silence by one luckless word, and lo, the chain of scientific reasoning dropped to pieces,--the popular statesman played the wrong card, and lost a thousand pounds. It was not often that Harcourt Lowther entertained his friends; but when Francis lapsed into a temporary stagnation, the master was apt to keep his pupil going on the road to ruin by such an entertainment as this. The quiet rubber at Mr. Lowther’s lodgings generally led to other rubbers elsewhere, or cursory appointments for Liverpool or Newmarket, or Chester or Northampton, or a dinner at Richmond, gaily cut for at blind hookey while the men were rising from the whist-table. It was a quarter-past twelve now. It would be nearly one o’clock before the fastest hansom could carry Mr. Tredethlyn to the Strand. Francis looked from the clock on the chimney-piece to the scrap of paper in his hand; hesitated for a few moments, with a black frown upon his face, and then started hastily from his lounging attitude, and looked about him for his hat. “There couldn’t be a better opportunity,” he muttered, “for saying what I want to say to him.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XXXV. A HASTY RECKONING. Harcourt Lowther had never played so bad a rubber as that with which he beguiled the evening while waiting Francis Tredethlyn’s appearance at the little bachelor-party assembled in his rooms. There was the usual blending of the hawk and pigeon tribe at Mr. Lowther’s reunion: the birds of prey distinguishable by the purple blackness of their dyed moustaches and the crow’s-feet round their faded eyes; the innocent fledglings fresh-coloured and tawny, with a profound belief in their own wisdom and a supreme contempt for everything outside the narrow circle in which they condescended to exist.