ich Sir Marmaduke paid him as salary.

He chided his own weakness inwardly, when he felt the hot tears surging
to his eyes at thought of the unworthy use to which his little hoard was
about to be put.

But he walked to the table with a bold step; there was nothing now of
the country lout about him; on the contrary, he moved with remarkable
dignity, and bore himself so well that many a pair of feminine eyes
watched him kindly, as he took his seat at the baize-covered table.

"Will one of you gentlemen teach me the game?" he asked simply.

It was remarkable that no one sneered at him again, and in these days of
arrogance peculiar to the upper classes this was all the more
noticeable, as these secret clubs were thought to be very exclusive, the
resort pre-eminently of gentlemen and noblemen who were anti-Puritan,
anti-Republican, and very jealous of their ranks and privileges.

Yet when after those few unpleasant moments of hesitation Lambert boldly
accepted the situation and with much simple dignity took his seat at the
table, everyone immediately accepted him as an equal, nor did anyone
question his right to sit there on terms of equality with Lord Walterton
or Sir Michael Isherwood.

His own state of mind was very remarkable at the moment.

Of course he disapproved of what he did: he would not have been the
Puritanically trained, country-bred lad that he was, if he had accepted
with an easy conscience the idea of tossing about money from hand to
hand, money that he could in no sense afford to lose, or money that no
one was making any honest effort to win.

He knew--somewhat vaguely perhaps, yet with some degree of
certainty--that gambling was an illicit pastime, and that therefore
he--by sitting at this table with these gentlemen, was deliberately
contravening the laws of his country.

Against all that, it is necessary to note that Richard Lambert took two
matters very much in earnest: first, his position as a paid dependent;
second, his gratitude to Sir Marmaduke de Chavasse.

And both these all-pervading facts combined to force him against his
will into this anomalous position of gentlemanly gambler, which suited
neither his temperament nor his principles.

With it all Lambert's was one of those dispositions, often peculiar to
those who have led an isolated and introspective life, which never do
anything half-heartedly; and just as he took his somewhat empty
secretarial duties seriously, so did he look on