'Look here, Cameron,' said Allan, as the twain smoked their cigars in a quiet place. 'It is little wonder to me that you, Sir Paget Puddicombe, and one or two others lost at cards with Holcroft as you did. I dined with our fellows at the mess in the Castle when I went to Edinburgh. There his name cropped up by the merest chance, and I was told by Carslogie of Ours that he was present at a shindy in London, where this fellow Holcroft, after having an unprecedented run at cards at a place in St. James Street, was accused of having the ace of trumps up his sleeve, from whence it fell when he was shying a bottle at the accuser's head. He talks to the pater largely of his "place in Essex," or what remains of it. Involved in debt to a ruinous extent, he gave bills right and left, which were dishonoured. £10,000 _had_ been raised upon his estate, in which he had only a reversionary interest, and, when the mortgagees called in their money, and the estate was sold, it did not suffice to pay a tithe of the sums he had raised in every conceivable way, and everyone lost their money all round. Sharp that! Yet he scraped through without punishment.' 'By Jove!' 'Worse still. Carslogie told me he was suspected of causing a horse to fail in a race through having the bit poisoned; and how he left a young fellow in the Hussars at Maidstone in the lurch, by refusing at the last moment to ride for him a peculiarly vicious horse, which he had solemnly undertaken to do, and so causing him to lose the race, on which he had most imprudently made a ruinously heavy book.' 'And how did it end?' 'The report of a pistol that night in the cavalry barrack announced that the Hussar had shot himself--that is all! And this is the "young man of the period" whom my father's confiding simplicity has made a welcome guest for some weeks back at Dundargue, and thrown into the society of my sister and Olive! But I shall fully open his eyes the moment our visitor is gone.' But it was rather a pity for his own sake that Allan did not 'open' Lord Aberfeldie's eyes a little before that event, and such being the character of Mr. Hawke Holcroft the reader may feel less surprised at some of the things we may have to record of him ere long. CHAPTER XV. THE CARPET-DANCE, AND WHAT CAME OF IT. Though somewhat of the nature of an impromptu affair, the 'carpet-dance' partook of something of a more important kind. Many guests were invited; the ladies were in semi-toilet and the gentlemen in evening dress: but the great dancing-room at Dundargue was decorated to perfection by the care of Mr. Tappleton, the butler, the housekeeper, and gardener, with the rarest plants, flowers, and ferns the conservatories could produce, disposed in China and Japanese jars on pedestals and marble console tables of the time of Louis XIV., at whose court a Lord Aberfeldie had once been ambassador.