“You should have heard what Fencer told me private,” Dibble went on, nodding his head, and clinging hard and fast to Paul Somerton’s arm: “that Mister Gentleman Gibbs is a sort of Jeremy Diddler, sir, depend on it; and master’s son is, they do say, the fastest man about town.” “Indeed! all right, Dib. I’ll hold you up, old boy,” said Paul, as Dibble plunged and fought his way through an imaginary crowd of obstructions. Dibble gradually becoming helpless, Paul was compelled to call a cab; and they reached Still Street just in time to find Mrs. Dibble alone and in good humour. But a change rapidly came over the salubrious calm when Mrs. Dibble noticed Thomas’s neck-tie twisted round to the back of his neck, and saw him gazing at her in a helpless state of idiotic admiration and amazement. Turning upon Paul she poured out such a volley of declamation against deceit, and the leading of innocence into temptation and sin, that Paul was fain to rush off to bed, and leave poor Dibble to contend with the remainder of the storm. He heard the matrimonial tempest raging for fully an hour after he had retired, until at length it gradually subsided, and peace was proclaimed in the sonorous snore of Dibblonian repose. It was long past midnight when the last card-party at the Ashford Club broke up. Young Hammerton and Richard Tallant left together, and Hammerton accepted the offer of a bed at Mr. Tallant’s house in Connaught Place, where a cab soon deposited them. The moon shone peacefully over the park as they crossed it, and made silvery sparkles on the windows of the long, fashionable row of houses. The trees stood out in the uncertain lights, with early spring leaves upon them. The long rows of lamps looked yellow and out of place in the pure light of the moon; and the distant whistle of a railway engine seemed all the more to mark the morning stillness. That whistle came home to Lionel Hammerton; it seemed to upbraid him, and at the same time invite him to the country of the Berne Hills. He had promised to return to his brother (who had been lying ill there for several weeks) two days ago; but the infatuation of play had come upon him, and his large losses of this evening had prompted him to endeavour to retrieve his ill-luck on the morrow. Mr. Gibbs had promised him his revenge, and Tallant and he were pledged to visit the Ashford on the next night. Mr. Tallant was light-hearted enough over his losses, whilst Hammerton sat gloomily thinking of his, and the sick brother, for whom he had a real affection. Mr. Richard Tallant hummed bits of an operatic chorus, and the most popular bars of the latest waltz. The two card acquaintances said scarcely a word until they bade each other good-night; and before Mr. Tallant was up the next day the Hon. Lionel Hammerton was steaming away on the Great Western to the halls of his fathers by the Berne Hills.