Lady Piercey fell back also in her chair, and whimpered a little piteously, like the poor old woman she was, as Sir Giles was wheeled out of the room. The backgammon board, overturned, lay on the floor, with the pieces scattered over the carpet, and Gervase scrambling after them, for Dunning had been too tremulous and frightened to pick more than half of them up. “Oh! my poor, silly boy! oh! you dreadful, dreadful fool!” the old lady cried. “Will you never learn any better? Can’t you wake up and be a man?” She cried over this, for a little, very bitterly, with that terrible sense of the incurable which turns the poor soul back upon itself--and then she flung round in her big chair towards her niece, who stood silent and troubled, not knowing what part to take. “It’s all your fault,” she cried in a fierce whisper, “for not finding something for him to do. Why didn’t you find something for him to do? You might have played something to him, or sung something with him, or got him to look at pictures, or---- anything! And now you’ve let your poor uncle go off in a rage, which may bring on a fit as likely as not, and me worse, for I can’t give in like him. Oh, Meg, what an ungrateful, selfish thing you are to stand there and never interfere when you might have found him something to do!” When Lady Piercey’s procession streamed off afterwards to bed, my lady leaning heavily on Parsons’ arm and Margaret following with the work, Gervase was left still picking up the pieces, sprawling over the carpet and laughing as he followed the little round pieces of ivory and wood into the corners where they had rolled. Margaret went back to the library after being released by her aunt, and found him still there making a childish game of this for his own amusement, and chuckling to himself as he raced them over the carpet. He scrambled up, however, a little ashamed when he heard her voice asking, “What are you doing, Gervase?” “Oh, nothing,” he said with his foolish laugh, stuffing the “men” into his pockets. She put her hand upon his shoulder kindly. “Gervase, dear, you’re quite grown up, don’t you know; quite a man now. You mustn’t be so mischievous, just like a boy. Poor Uncle Giles, you must not play tricks upon him; he likes a quiet game.” “Don’t you be a fool, Meg. Why, that was what I was doing all the night, playing his quiet game. Poor old father, he got into a temper, but bless you ’twasn’t my fault. It’s that old ass, Dunning, that’s always getting in everybody’s way.” “Of course he would like you best, Gervase,--but Dunning knows all his ways. Your game might be better fun----” “I should think so,” said the poor Softy. “My game _is_ the game, and Dunning spoils everything. It ain’t my fault, though every one of you gets into a wax with me,”--Gervase’s lip quivered a little as if he might have cried,--“and me giving up everything only to please them!” he said.