It was not, then, merely that Sewell obliterated every memory of the evening before, but he made Cave forget the actual object for which he had come that morning. Projects, besides, for future pleasure did Sewell throw out, like a man who had both the leisure, the means, and the taste for enjoyment. There was some capital shooting he had just taken; his neighbor, an old squire, had never cared for it, and let him have it “for a song.” They were going to get up hack races, too, in the Park,--“half-a-dozen hurdles and a double ditch to tumble over,” as he said, “will amuse our garrison fellows,--and my wife has some theatrical intentions--if you will condescend to help her.” Sewell talked with that blended munificence and shiftiness, which seems a specialty with a certain order of men. Nothing was too costly to be done, and yet everything must be accomplished with a dexterity that was almost a dodge. The men of this gift are great scene-painters. They dash you off a view--be it a wood or a rich interior, a terraced garden or an Alpine hut--in a few loose touches. Ay! and they “smudge” them out again before criticism has had time to deal with them. “By the way,” cried he, suddenly, stopping in the full swing of some description of a possible regatta, “I was half forgetting what brought me here this morning. I am in your debt, Cave.” He stopped as though his speech needed some rejoinder, and Cave grew very red and very uneasy--tried to say something--anything--but could not. The fact was, that, like a man who had never in all his life adventured on high play or risked a stake that could possibly be of importance to him, he felt pretty much the same amount of distress at having won as he would have felt at having lost. He well knew that if by any mischance he had incurred such a loss as a thousand pounds, it would have been a most serious embarrassment--by what right, then, had he won it? Now, although feelings of this sort were about the very last to find entrance into Sewell's heart, he well knew that there were men who were liable to them, just as there were people who were exposed to plague or yellow fever, and other maladies from which he lived remote. It was, then, with a sort of selfish delight that he saw Cave's awkward hesitating manner, and read the marks of the shame that was overwhelming him. “A heavy sum too,” said Sewell, jauntily; “we went the whole 'pot' on that last rubber.” “I wish I could forget it--I mean,” muttered Cave, “I wish we could both forget it.” “I have not the least objection to that,” said Sewell gayly; “only let it first be paid.” “Well, but--what I meant was--what I wanted to say, or rather, what I hoped--was--in plain words, Sewell,” burst he out, like a man to whom desperation gave courage,--“in plain words, I never intended to play such stakes as we played last night,--I never have--I never will again.” “Not to give me my revenge?” said Sewell, laughing.