or a card from up his sleeve. Let us frankly plead, for that matter, that he found himself affected before this passage lapsed as by the suddenest vision of a possibility of his having to appeal from the imputation, as who should say, of cheating, cheating in that sense which his above-mentioned love of the game, exactly, might expose him to suspicion of; this for all the world as if he were seated with the house of Midmore, not to speak of other company too, at a green table and between tall brave candlesticks which would at a given moment somehow perversely light the exchange of queer glances from partner to partner at his expense. So odd an apprehension could cast of course but the briefest shade: breath after breath and hint after hint--though whence directed who should say?--so spending themselves upon the surface of his sensibility that impressions, as we have already seen, were successively effaced and nothing persisted but the force of derived motion. As soon as he had heard his affianced bride, for instance, take up with infinite spirit the words of accommodation just addressed by him to her brother he seemed to see a shining clearance and to measure the span by which the three of them together, he and she and her mother, would be cleverer than any home criticism. "What puts it into your head, please, that if I'm quite content, and bold enough into the bargain to say as much to whomever it may concern, what puts it into your head that he may have a case against you that need give you the least trouble?" She spoke that out like her mother's daughter, whether like her brother's sister or no, blooming with still greater beauty and so attracting and holding Perry's eyes in consequence that when he turned them back again they reflected something of her pride. "There's not a gentleman too grand for her anywhere," her brother observed to Ralph; "but I suppose you think yourself quite one of ourselves; which I don't say you're not," he added with due caution, "if you really please her and please my mother, to say nothing----"