"So it is," said Margery. "But it has been of no use my telling her so. She took it into her head to sit up for you; and sit up she has. Not there, sir"--for he was turning to their sitting-room--"she is lying back in the big chair in her bedroom." George entered. Maria, white and wan and tired, was lying back, as Margery expressed it, in the large easy-chair. She was too fatigued, too exhausted to get up: she only held out her hand to her husband. "My darling, you know this is wrong," he gently said, bending over her. "Good heavens, Maria! how ill and tired you look!" "I should not have slept had I gone to bed," she said. "George, tell me where you have been: where it is that you go in an evening?" A misgiving crossed George Godolphin's mind--that she already knew where. She looked painfully distressed, and there was a peculiar significance in her tone, but she spoke with timid deprecation. His conscience told him that the amusement he had been recently pursuing would not show out well in the broad light of day. An unmarried man may send himself to ruin if it pleases him to do it; but not one who has assumed the responsibilities of George Godolphin. Ruin, however, had not yet come to George Godolphin, or fear of ruin. The worst that had happened was, that he had contracted a debt to Mr. Verrall, which he did not at present see his way clear to paying. He could not refund so large a sum out of the bank without the question being put by his partners, Where does it go to? Mr. Verrall had relieved him of the embarrassment by suggesting interest. A very easy settling of the question it appeared to the careless mind of George Godolphin: and he felt obliged to Mr. Verrall. "Maria!" he exclaimed, "what are you thinking of? What is the matter?" Maria changed her position. She let her head glide from the chair on to his sheltering arm. "Mrs. Verrall frightened me, George. Will you be angry with me if I tell you? She came in this evening, and she said you and Mr. Verrall were losing all your money at the gaming-table." George Godolphin's face grew hot and angry, worse than it had been in the gambling-room, and mentally he gave Mrs. Verrall an exceedingly uncomplimentary word. "What possessed her to say that?" he exclaimed. And in truth he wondered what could have possessed her. Verrall, at any rate, was not losing his money. "Were you so foolish as to believe it, Maria?" "Only a little of it, George. Pray forgive me! I am weak just now, you know, and things startle me. I have heard dreadful tales of these foreign gaming-places: and I knew how much you had been out at night since we came here. It is not so, is it, George?"