ompanion.

But Will's method of settling accounts was by producing a couple of
fresh packs of cards, and offering to submit Harry's debt to the process
of being doubled or acquitted. The poor chaplain had no more ready cash
than Lord Castlewood's younger brother. Harry Warrington wanted to win
the money of neither. Would he give pain to the brother of his adored
Maria, or allow any one of her near kinsfolk to tax him with any want of
generosity or forbearance? He was ready to give them their revenge, as
the gentlemen proposed. Up to midnight he would play with them for what
stakes they chose to name. And so they set to work, and the dice-box was
rattled and the cards shuffled and dealt.

Very likely he did not think about the cards at all. Very likely he was
thinking;--"At this moment, my beloved one is sitting with her beauteous
golden locks outspread under the fingers of her maid. Happy maid! Now
she is on her knees, the sainted creature, addressing prayers to that
Heaven which is the abode of angels like her. Now she has sunk to rest
behind her damask curtains. Oh, bless, bless her!" "You double us all
round? I will take a card upon each of my two. Thank you, that will
do--a ten--now, upon the other, a queen,--two natural vingt-et-uns, and
as you doubled us you owe me so-and-so."

I imagine volleys of oaths from Mr. William, and brisk pattering of
imprecations from his reverence, at the young Virginian's luck. He won
because he did not want to win. Fortune, that notoriously coquettish
jade, came to him, because he was thinking of another nymph, who
possibly was as fickle. Will and the chaplain may have played against
him, solicitous constantly to increase their stakes, and supposing that
the wealthy Virginian wished to let them recover all their losings. But
this was by no means Harry Warrington's notion. When he was at home he
had taken a part in scores of such games as these (whereby we may be led
to suppose that he kept many little circumstances of his life mum from
his lady mother), and had learned to play and pay. And as he practised
fair play towards his friends he expected it from them in return.

"The luck does seem to be with me, cousin," he said, in reply to some
more oaths and growls of Will, "and I am sure I do not want to press it;
but you don't suppose I'm going to be such a fool as to fling it away
altogether? I have quite a heap of your promises on paper by this time.
If we are to go on playing, le