Poor Griscombe stood overwhelmed with a multitude of emotions. One thing alone was clear to his mind: he must protect his innocent and precious charge from all knowledge of what had now doubtless befallen her unhappy father. It were better that those emissaries of evil that had beset him should fulfil their every purpose--even to the last--rather than that she should suffer. He must be dumb, and allow them to conclude their dreadful work. After all, he could easily inform M. de Troinville before the fatal portmanteau should be opened. "I will obey you if you command me, madame," he cried; "but pray, pray spare me this!" And, as he spoke, he fixed upon Miss Desmond a look of such agonizing appeal that she could not but have been moved by it, had she not been blinded by her own imperiousness of purpose. As it was, she only hardened her face into a still more immovable expression of determination. Where-upon, finding her not to be shaken, our hero sank into rather than sat down upon the chair beside him. The old gentleman with the beard, having thus gained his point, beamed with the utmost cheerfulness of expression, and, advancing with alacrity, pushed aside the dinner plates, and immediately assumed a position opposite his unwilling opponent, and between him and the door of the room where his precious portmanteau lay hidden. Having thus established himself, the old gentleman drew from a capacious pocket a sandalwood box inlaid with arabesque figures of gold and mother-of-pearl. Opening this box, he displayed, to the profound astonishment of at least one of his companions, an exquisitely wrought tablet of mother-of-pearl and gold, pierced with one-and-eighty holes arranged in a square of nine. Opening a slide in the side of the tablet, he thence emptied from a receptacle upon the table five curiously wrought pins of gold, and a like number of silver. Handing the five pins of the more precious metal to Griscombe and reserving for himself the five pegs of silver, the old gentleman immediately explained to his listeners the simple process of the game upon which he proposed to embark. Each player in turn was to thrust a pin into a hole in the tablet, and he who could so far escape his opponent's interference as to arrange three of the five pins in a line should, upon each occurrence thereof, have scored a point in the game. Having completed these easy instructions, he immediately invited Griscombe to open the play, which he upon his part entered upon with every appearance of entire enjoyment and satisfaction.