ing with
animation. Lydgate was playing well, and felt confident; the bets were
dropping round him, and with a swift glancing thought of the probable
gain which might double the sum he was saving from his horse, he began
to bet on his own play, and won again and again. Mr. Bambridge had
come in, but Lydgate did not notice him. He was not only excited with
his play, but visions were gleaming on him of going the next day to
Brassing, where there was gambling on a grander scale to be had, and
where, by one powerful snatch at the devil's bait, he might carry it
off without the hook, and buy his rescue from his daily solicitings.

He was still winning when two new visitors entered. One of them was a
young Hawley, just come from his law studies in town, and the other was
Fred Vincy, who had spent several evenings of late at this old haunt of
his. Young Hawley, an accomplished billiard-player, brought a cool
fresh hand to the cue. But Fred Vincy, startled at seeing Lydgate, and
astonished to see him betting with an excited air, stood aside, and
kept out of the circle round the table.

Fred had been rewarding resolution by a little laxity of late. He had
been working heartily for six months at all outdoor occupations under
Mr. Garth, and by dint of severe practice had nearly mastered the
defects of his handwriting, this practice being, perhaps, a little the
less severe that it was often carried on in the evening at Mr. Garth's
under the eyes of Mary. But the last fortnight Mary had been staying
at Lowick Parsonage with the ladies there, during Mr. Farebrother's
residence in Middlemarch, where he was carrying out some parochial
plans; and Fred, not seeing anything more agreeable to do, had turned
into the Green Dragon, partly to play at billiards, partly to taste the
old flavor of discourse about horses, sport, and things in general,
considered from a point of view which was not strenuously correct. He
had not been out hunting once this season, had had no horse of his own
to ride, and had gone from place to place chiefly with Mr. Garth in his
gig, or on the sober cob which Mr. Garth could lend him. It was a
little too bad, Fred began to think, that he should be kept in the
traces with more severity than if he had been a clergyman. "I will
tell you what, Mistress Mary--it will be rather harder work to learn
surveying and drawing plans than it would have been to write sermons,"
he had said, wishing her to appreciate wh