He was often tempted in the course of a quarter of an hour to try Mr. Barter with a sudden challenge, and see what would come of it. Surveying his companion with that placid inquiry which Barter felt to be so excessively uncomfortable, he came to have but a poor opinion of his courage. He was one of those men who, even without knowing it, take profound observations of their fellow-creatures. The true observer of human nature is by no means a personage who is always on the strain after insight into character. He is, on the contrary, pretty generally an inward-looking man, who seems to notice little, and takes in his surroundings as the immortal Joey Ladle did his wine. Philip judged Barter to be a nervous man, and supposed him, even when strung to his bent, to have no great tenacity or continuance of courage. He had learned more and more to believe his father’s story, though he had perhaps too carefully guarded himself from his own eager desire to accept it Barter’s every action with the cards offered confirmation of the belief that he had taken possession of the lost notes. He was certainly a petty rascal, and there was obviously nothing but opportunity needed to make him bloom into a rascal on a larger scale. So the temptation to drop the cards upon the table, to look his companion in the face, and to ask simply, ‘How about that eight thousand pounds?’ grew more and more upon him, and had to be more and more strenuously resisted. It seemed worth while to resist it To begin with, if young Barter should be innocent, the querist could evidently expect nothing else than to be taken for a madman. To continue, if his name and the likeness to his father had already set the thief upon his guard, and had prepared him for accusation, the question would only reveal his own suspicion, and thereby weaken the chances of discovery. Philip combated his inward desire, but could not quell it. There seemed a kind of intuition in it, a lurking certainty lay hidden behind all the doubts he saw, and pushed him forward. By and by young Mr. Barter tripped on the false cut, which he had hitherto executed with a fair amateur dexterity. ‘Excuse me,’ said Phil, as he gathered the spilt cards together. ‘You should make the three separate motions look like one. Do the trick so.’ He performed the trick slowly, looking Barter in the face, and then went through it swiftly. ‘That is how the thing ought to be done, Mr. Barter,’ he said, with a placidity which his companion found singularly disquieting. And now, that same unhappy want of self-command which had given Steinberg so clear an insight into his young friend’s mind, fell once more upon Barter. He tried to look wondering, he tried to laugh. The result of that frightened contortion of the features was nothing less than ghastly. Unhappily for himself he knew it, and so he grew ghastlier yet, and for the life of him could not tell where to set his eyes.