“You don’t feel that Ormskirk would be better than a debtors’ prison?” suggested Lady Bellingham, in a desponding voice.

Deborah broke into laughter. “Aunt Lizzie, you are a most shocking creature! How can you talk so?”

“Well, but, my dear, you will be just as surely ruined for ever in prison as under Ormskirk’s protection, and far less agreeably,” said her ladyship, with strong common sense. “Not that I wish for such a connexion, for I don’t, but what else is to be done?”

“Oh, I have the oddest notion that something will happen to set all to rights, ma’am! Indeed I have!”

“Yes, love,” said Lady Bellingham, without much hope. “We both of us had that notion when we laid five hundred guineas on Jack-Come-Tickle-Me at the Newmarket races, but it turned out otherwise.”

“Well,” said Miss Grantham, thrusting all the bills into one of the drawers of a small writing-table by the window, “I have a very good mind to back Mr Ravenscar to win his curricle race against Sir James Filey. He was offering odds at five to one on himself.”

“What is all this?” demanded Lady Bellingham. “Lucius did say something about an absurd bet, but I was not attending.”

“Oh, Sir James was being as odious as ever, and it seems he was beaten in a race against Ravenscar six months ago, and is as wild as fire to come about again. The long and the short of it is that Ravenscar offered to run against him when and where he chose for a stake of five thousand pounds. And as though that were not enough, he laid odds at five to one against Sir James! He must be very sure of himself.”

“But that is twenty-five thousand pounds!” exclaimed Lad Bellingham, who had been doing some rapid multiplication

“If he loses!”

“I never heard of anything so provoking!” declared he ladyship. “If he has twenty-five thousand pounds to lose, pray why could he not do so at my faro-bank? But so it is always Men have never the least spark of consideration for anything but their own pleasure. Well, I recall that his father was a very disagreeable, selfish kind of a man, and I dare say the son is no better.”

Miss Grantham returned no answer to this. Her aunt, was satisfied with her appearance, picked up a pot of Serkis rouge and began to apply this aid to beauty with a ruthless hand. “It is the oddest thing,” she remarked, “but all the richest men at the most odious creatures imaginable! Only think of Filey, and now Ravenscar!”

“Good God, ma’am, you cannot mean to couple Mr Ravenscar with that vile man.” cried Miss Grantham, flushing a little.

Lady Bellingham set the rouge-pot down. “Deb, never say you have taken a fancy to Ravenscar?” she exclaimed. “I would be the most wonderful thing if he could be got to offer for you, but I have been thinking it over, my dear, and believe it won’t answer. He is turned thirty-five, and has new asked any female to marry him that I ever heard of. Besides, he is said to be abominably close, and that would not do for us all.”

“Offer for me indeed! Of course he won’t, or I accept him believe me, aunt! And as for fancies—pooh, what nonsense I liked him for taking Sir James up so swiftly, and for something about him that was different from all those other met but he was quite rude to me, you know. I am very sure he despises me for presiding at gaming-tables. I cannot conceive what should have brought him to the house, unless it was to see what kind of a harpy his cousin had fallen in love with.”

“Oh dear!” sighed Lady Bellingham. “I daresay that would be it! We shall have him whisking poor Adrian off, and then, shall have no one but Ormskirk to fall back upon.”

Miss Grantham laughed. “He may whisk him off with my good-will, I assure you, ma’am, but he seemed to me much lit a sensible man, and will no doubt have seen that the foolish boy will come to no harm in this house. Why, I will not even permit him to put down a rouleau of above ten guineas at a time!”

“No,” said her ladyship regretfully. “And he is not at all a lucky punter. It does seem a pity, my love.”

“Now, you know very well, ma’am, you don’t wish to be plucking schoolboys!” Deborah said, laying an arm about her aunt’s shoulders.

Lady Bellingham agreed to this, but without much conviction. A small black page scratched on the door for admittance, and announced that Massa Kennet was below-stairs. Deborah kissed her aunt, recommended her not to worry her head over the bills, and went off to join this friend of her childhood in the small back-room behind the dining-room.

If to live by one’s wits and a dice-box was to be a soldier-of-fortune, Mr Ravenscar had summed Mr Lucius Kennet up correctly. Although considerably his junior, he had been one of the late Captain Wilfred Grantham’s closest friends, wandering about Europe with him, and generally sharing his fluctuating fortunes. Like Silas Wantage, at present engaged in cleaning silver in the pantry, while Mortimer, Lady Bellingham’s expensive butler, slept with the current number of the Morning Advertiser spread over his face, Lucius Kennet had always formed a part of Miss Grantham’s background. He had never been above mending a broken doll, or tying up a cut finger; and when Deborah reached adolescence he had constituted himself an easy-going protector. Captain Grantham had not been one to put himself out for a parcel of plaguey brats, the greatest effort he had ever made on his son’s and daughter’s behalf having been to place them in his sister’s care upon the death of his long-suffering wife.

Lady Bellingham, childless, and devoted to a brother who recalled her existence only when he found himself in straits from which it was in her power to rescue him, was delighted with the charge, and could not imagine that a boy of twelve and a girl of fifteen could be the least trouble in the world. She had been a widow for some few years, living a somewhat hand-to-mouth existence, and she had very soon discovered that a boy of school age, and a girl requiring a governess, were expensive luxuries. She had a small fortune of her own, besides a much smaller jointure, and generally relied upon her luck at all games of chance to bridge the gap between her income and her expenditure. She gave charming little parties at her house in Clarges Street, and was so successful at the faro-table, that the idea of turning her propensity for cards to good account gradually took root in her mind. Mr Lucius Kennel appearing suddenly in London with the news of Captain Grantham’s death in Munich, was happy to lend her ladyship the benefit of his experience and advice, and even to deal for her, at her first faro-bank. It had really answered amazingly well, and had even provided funds for the purchase of a pair of colours for Mr Christopher Grantham, upon that young gentleman’s leaving school.

At the outset, it had been no part of Lady Bellingham’s place to admit her niece into her gaming-saloon. She could never be quite certain how it had happened that within a month of being emancipated from the schoolroom Deborah had mad her appearance at one of those cosy evening-parties, but it ha, happened, and the girl had been such an instant success wit her aunt’s male guests, and had brought such a rush of new visitors to the house, that it would clearly have been folly to have excluded her.

The card-parties in Clarges Street had been held during peak period of gaming. Gentlemen had thought nothing of staking rouleaus of fifty guineas on the turn of a card, and the profits of the modest little house had really quite justified the acquiring of a much larger establishment in St James’s Square But whether it was because there had been a great deal of absurd stuff written in the daily papers about the wickedness of such gaming-houses as Mrs Sturt’s, and Lady Buckingham’s, which might have caused the attendances to fall off trifle; or whether because the expenses of the house in St James’s Square were much heavier than Lady Bellingham had anticipated, there had not been any profits to enjoy for several months. Of course, quite large sums of money found their way into Lady Bellingham’s pockets, but somehow or other these were always swallowed up by the tide of bill which so inexplicably threatened to engulf the house. For the past few weeks, too, the establishment had been suffering from a run of most persistent ill-luck. The faro-bank ha been broken for six thousand pounds on one disastrous evening, and a misfortune such as that was hard to recover from Lady Bellingham had done her best by introducing the game of E.O. into her rooms, but even this had not gone very far to set matters to rights, since serious gamesters were inclined to despise it, and it certainly could not be said to improve tone of the house. In fact, as Deborah said bitterly, it reduced it to the ranks of quite common gaming-hells.

It had been one of Lucius Kennet’s ideas, well-meant, of course, but very displeasing to Miss Grantham. He had lately been talking of the new game of roulette, which seemed to be played on much the same principles as E.O., but Miss Grantham was determined that no roulette board should make its appearance in St James’s Square.

Mr Kennet, when Miss Grantham joined him, was idly engaged in casting the dice, right hand against left, on a small table in the centre of the room. “Good morning, me darlin’,” he said cheerfully, not desisting from his occupation. “Will you look at the fiend’s own luck of my left hand, now? Upon my soul, it can’t lose!” He cast a shrewd glance at Miss Grantham’s rather pensive expression, and added: “What’s the trouble, me dear? Is it Ormskirk again, or will it be the suckling;”

“It isn’t either,” replied Deborah, sitting down on the opposite side of the table. “At least, no more than I’m used to. Lucius, what is to become of us?”