Faro was the game, and the stakes were swingeing The four had played from three o’clock of a Thursday afternoon to six of the Friday morning. In the white spread of day their eyes showed up blood-shot, their cheeks grimy with candle soot, their hair slack and unstrung. My lord Dunlone, who was a slipslop youth, colourless and jejune, with stains of wine on his chin and high cravat, brooded in fathomless sulkiness, the only pronounced expression he was ever real master of. His neighbour, Sir Robert Linne, had the look of a fine tormented devil, desperate and at bay. These were the losers. Of the winners, Mr. Ladislaw was a perspiring cabbage of a man, stunted and over-headed; and he seemed drunk and amazed with his good fortune; and the major presented a lean and hungry appearance, as if his passions were devouring worms--which indeed I believe they were. About six of the clock there came a pause in the game--the lull before the crash. Mr. Ladislaw, twinkling prosperity, bent obsequiously to the baronet, his cards clumped together in one hand. “The stakes as before, Sir Robert?” he said in a small, confidential voice. The other gave a hollow laugh, checking it frowningly in mid-career. “I think so,” he said. “If there happens a margin, why--we must make it a broad one, on paper.” “As you please, sir.” Major Dalrymple, with his thick lips dropped apart, was gazing breathingly at his sulky neighbour. The latter, conscious of the inquiring scrutiny, pulled himself erect--a cub of ill-temper. “Curse it!” he muttered, with a surly sidelong glance. “What am I being stared at for, curse it?” “Your pardon, my lord,” said the major, in a high, stiff voice. “I looked only to inquire your stake.” “I can settle it myself, sir, without your help”--and, with a very meaning action, he held his cards face-downwards upon his breast. The major went back in his chair, his corded hands thrust out rigidly before him on the table. “My lord Dunlone,” he said, “impugns not only my judgment, but my honour!” “Oh, curse it!” cried the Viscount. “What have I said?” “It was your action spoke, sir.” Sir Robert laughed recklessly. “You’re hard on my lord. He clasped his dear love to his bosom--no more. ’Tis an amorous way he has.” The dyspeptic face of the soldier went dark. He recognized an allusion in the bantering words. The Viscount Dunlone, in fact (it was notorious), had outbidden him in the favour of a certain Mademoiselle Carminelle, a _figurante_ at Vauxhall in the suit of Mr. “Tom Restless”; and, popularly, he was supposed to have aged under the disappointment. “Come!” cried the baronet. “Give us the privilege of driving to the devil our own way. You mustn’t criticize the actions of dying men. We writhe with wounds, sir, while you are sound.”--He turned to Mr. Ladislaw, who sat staring, apprehensive. “I stake my all,” he said; and named a sum sufficiently desperate.