Play was of necessity interrupted. Groups of people eating and drinking congregated round the tables. The men mostly discussed various phases of the game; there was so little else for idlers to talk about these days. No comedies or other diversions, neither cock-fighting nor bear-baiting, and abuse of my Lord Protector and his rigorous disciplinarian laws had already become stale. The women talked dress and coiffure, the new puffs, the fanciful pinners. But at the center table Segrave still sat, refusing all refreshment, waiting with obvious impatience for the ending of this unwelcome interval. When first he found himself isolated in the crowd, he had counted over with febrile eagerness the money which lay in a substantial heap before him. "Saved!" he muttered between his teeth, speaking to himself like one who is dreaming, "saved! Thank God! ... Two hundred and fifty pounds ... only another fifty and I'll never touch these cursed cards again ... only another fifty...." He buried his face in his hands; the moisture stood out in heavy drops on his forehead. He looked all round him with ever-growing impatience. "My God! why don't they come back! ... Another fifty pounds ... and I can put the money back ... before it has been missed.... Oh! why don't they come back!" Quite a tragedy expressed in those few muttered words, in the trembling hands, the damp forehead. Money taken from an unsuspecting parent, guardian or master, which? What matter? A tragedy of ordinary occurrence even in those days when social inequalities were being abolished by act of Parliament. In the meanwhile Lord Walterton, halting of speech, insecure of foothold, after his third bumper of heady sack, was explaining to Sir Michael Isherwood the mysteries of his system for playing the noble game of primero. "It is sure to break the bank in time," he said confidently, "I am for going to Paris where play runs high, and need not be carried on in this hole and corner fashion to suit cursed Puritanical ideas." "Tell me your secret, Walterton," urged worthy Sir Michael, whose broad Shropshire acres were heavily mortgaged, after the rapine and pillage of civil war. "Well! I can but tell you part, my friend," rejoined the other, "yet 'tis passing simple. You begin with one golden guinea ... and lose it ... then you put up two and lose again...." "Passing simple," assented Sir Michael ironically. "But after that you put up four guineas." "And lose it." "Yea! yea! mayhap you lose it ... but then you put up eight guineas ... and win. Whereupon you are just as you were before." And with a somewhat unsteady hand the young man raised a bumper to his lips, whilst eying Sir Michael with the shifty and inquiring eye peculiar to the intoxicated. "Meseems that if you but abstain from playing altogether," quoth Sir Michael impatiently, "the result would still be the same.... And suppose you lose the eight guineas, what then?" "Oh! 'tis vastly simple--you put up sixteen."