“Faix! I believe you're right there, my little chap,” said Peter, laughing heartily, and at once recovering all his wonted good-humor at the sound of his own mellow-toned mirth; and in this pleasant mood he gave an arm to each of his fair companions, and led them into the supper-room. There was an ostentatious desire for display in the order Dalton gave that evening to the waiter. It seemed as if he wished to appear perfectly indifferent about his losses. The table was covered with a costly profusion that attracted general notice. Wines of the rarest and most precious vintages stood on the sideboard. Dalton did the honors with even more than his accustomed gayety. There was a stimulant in that place at the head of the table; there was some magical influence in the duty of host that never failed with him. The sense of sway and power that ambitious minds feel in high and pre-eminent stations were all his, as he sat at the top of his board; and it must be owned that with many faults of manner, and many shortcomings on the score of taste, yet Peter did the honors of his table well and gracefully. Certain is it Mrs. Ricketts and her friends thought so. Zoe was in perfect ecstasies at the readiness of his repartees and the endless variety of his anecdotes. He reminded her at once of Sheridan and “poor dear Mirabeau,” and various other “beaux esprits” she used to live with. Martha listened to him with sincere pleasure. Purvis grew very tipsy in the process of his admiration, and the old General, suddenly brought back to life and memory under the influence of champagne, thought him so like Jack Trevor, of the Engineers, that he blubbered out, “I think I 'm listening to Jack. It's poor Trevor over again.” Was it any wonder if in such intoxications Peter forgot all his late reverses, nor ever remembered them till he had wished his company good-night, and found himself alone in his own chamber? Pecuniary difficulties were no new thing to Dalton, and it would not have interfered with his pleasant dreams that night had the question been one of those ordinary demands which he well knew how to resist or evade by many a legal sleight and many an illegal artifice; but here was a debt of honor. He had given his name, three or four times during the evening, for large sums, lost on the very instant they were borrowed. These must be repaid on the next day; but how, he knew not. How he “stood” in Abel Kraus's books he had not the remotest idea. It might be with a balance, or it might be with a deficit All he really knew was that he had latterly drawn largely, and spent freely; and as Abel always smiled and seemed satisfied, Peter concluded that his affairs needed no surer or safer evidences of prosperity. To have examined ledgers and day-books with such palpable proofs of solvency would have been, in his eyes, an act of as great absurdity as that of a man who would not believe in the sunshine till he had first consulted the thermometer.