Pembroke came forward eagerly as he entered. "Such a day of it, Lady Kitty!" he exclaimed, impulsively. "You will pardon me for coming thus, when I say I have just been robbed of my horse. 'Twas at your very door, and methinks you must know the highwayman. I have come to tell you of the news." "You don't mean--" "Yes, but I do! 'Twas no less than Mr. Law, of Scotland. He hath taken my horse and gone off like a whirlwind, leaving me afoot and friendless, save for your good self. I am begging a taste of tea and a little biscuit, for I vow I am half famished." The Lady Catharine Knollys, in sheer reaction from the strain, broke out into a peal of laughter. "Sure, he has strange ways about him, this same Mr. Law," said she. "That young man would have come here direct, and would have made himself quite at home, methinks, had he had but the first encouragement." "Gad! Lady Catharine, but he has a conceit of himself. Think you of what he has done in his short stay here in town! First, as you know, he sat at cards with two or three of us the other evening--Charlie Castleton, Beau Wilson, myself and one or two besides. And what doth he do but stake a bauble against good gold that he would make _sept et le va_." "And did it?" "And did it. Yes, faith, as though he saw it coming. Yet 'twas I who cut and dealt the cards. Nor was that the half of it," he went on. "He let the play run on till 'twas _seize et le va_, then _vingt-un et le va_, then twenty-five. And, strike me! Lady Catharine, if he sat not there cool as my Lord Speaker in the Parliament, and saw the cards run to _trente et le va_, as though 'twere no more to him than the eating of an orange!" "And showed no anxiety at all?" "None, as I tell you, and he proved to us plain that he had not two-pence to his name, for that he had been robbed the night before while on his way to town. He staked a diamond, a stone of worth. I must say, his like was never seen at cards." "He hath strange quality."