ely that
he would play no tricks.

'No, hang me! no tricks!' my lord cried somewhat alarmed. 'Not that--'

'Not that I am likely to displace your lordship, her affections once
gained,' said Mr. Pomeroy.

He lowered his face to hide a smile of bitter derision, but he might
have spared his pains; for Lord Almeric, never very wise, was blinded by
vanity. 'No, I should think not,' he said, with a conceit which came
near to deserving the other's contempt. 'I should think not, Tommy. Give
me twenty minutes of a start, as Jack Wilkes says, and you may follow as
you please. I rather fancy I brought down the bird at the first shot?'

'Certainly, my lord.'

'I did, didn't I?'

'Most certainly, your lordship did,' repeated the obsequious tutor;
who, basking in the smiles of his host's good-humour, began to think
that things would run smoothly after all. So the lady was toasted, and
toasted again. Nay, so great was Mr. Pomeroy's complaisance and so easy
his mood, he must needs have up three or four bottles of Brooks and
Hellier that had lain in the cellar half a century--the last of a
batch--and give her a third time in bumpers and no heel-taps.

But that opened Mr. Thomasson's eyes. He saw that Pomeroy had reverted
to his idea of the night before, and was bent on making the young fop
drunk, and exposing him in that state to his mistress; perhaps had the
notion of pushing him on some rudeness that, unless she proved very
compliant indeed, must ruin him for ever with her. Three was their
dinner hour; it was not yet four, yet already the young lord was flushed
and a little flustered, talked fast, swore at Jarvey, and bragged of the
girl lightly and without reserve. By six o'clock, if something were not
done, he would be unmanageable.

The tutor stood in no little awe of his host. He had tremors down his
back when he thought of his violence; nor was this dogged persistence in
a design, as cruel as it was cunning, calculated to lessen the feeling.
But he had five thousand pounds at stake, a fortune on which he had been
pluming himself since noon; it was no time for hesitation. They were
dining in the hall at the table at which they had played cards the night
before, Jarvey and Lord Almeric's servant attending them. Between the
table and the staircase was a screen. The next time Lord Almeric's glass
was filled, the tutor, in reaching something, upset the glass and its
contents over his own breeches, and amid the laughter of the