From a chance meeting in a public billiard-room, an intimacy arose between Victor Carrington and Reginald Eversleigh, which speedily ripened into friendship. The weaker nature was glad to find a stronger on which to lean. Reginald Eversleigh invited his new friend to his rooms--to champagne breakfasts, to suppers of broiled bones, eaten long after midnight: to card-parties, at which large sums of money were lost and won; but the losers were never Victor Carrington or Reginald Eversleigh, and there were men who said that Eversleigh was a more dangerous opponent at loo and whist since he had picked up that fellow Carrington. "I always feel afraid of Eversleigh, when that sallow-faced surgeon is his partner at whist, or hangs about his chair at _écarté_," said one of the officers in Reginald Eversleigh's regiment. "It's my opinion that black-eyed Frenchman is Mephistopheles in person. I never saw a countenance that so fully realized my idea of the devil." People laughed at the dragoon's notion: but there were few of Mr. Eversleigh's guests who liked his new acquaintance, and there were some who kept altogether aloof from the young cornet's rooms, after two or three evenings spent in the society of Mr. Carrington. "The fellow is too clever," said one of Eversleigh's brother-officers; "these very clever men are almost invariably scoundrels. I respect a man who is great in one thing--a great surgeon, a great lawyer, a great soldier--but your fellow who knows everything better than anybody else is always a villain." Victor Carrington was the only person to whom Reginald Eversleigh told the real story of his breach with his uncle. He trusted Victor: not because he cared to confide in him--for the story was too humiliating to be told without pain--but because he wanted counsel from a stronger mind than his own. "It's rather a hard thing to drop from the chance of forty thousand a year to a pension of a couple of hundred, isn't it, Carrington?" said Reginald, as the two young men dined together in the cornet's quarters, a fortnight after the scene in Arlington Street. "It's rather hard, isn't it, Carrington?" "Yes, it _would be_ rather hard, if such a contingency were possible," replied the surgeon, coolly; "but we don't mean to drop from forty thousand to two hundred. The generous old uncle may choose to draw his purse-strings, and cast us off to 'beggarly divorcement,' as Desdemona remarks; but we don't mean to let him have his own way. We must take things quietly, and manage matters with a little tact. You want my advice, I suppose, my dear Reginald?" "I do."