and cottage. With the coming of night, the haze closed
in overhead; it fell dark and still and starless, and exceeding cold: a
night the most unseasonable, fit for strange events.

Mrs. Henry withdrew, as was now her custom, very early. We had set
ourselves of late to pass the evening with a game of cards; another
mark that our visitor was wearying mightily of the life at Durrisdeer;
and we had not been long at this when my old lord slipped from his place
beside the fire, and was off without a word to seek the warmth of bed.
The three thus left together had neither love nor courtesy to share; not
one of us would have sat up one instant to oblige another; yet from the
influence of custom, and as the cards had just been dealt, we continued
the form of playing out the round. I should say we were late sitters;
and though my lord had departed earlier than was his custom, twelve was
already gone some time upon the clock, and the servants long ago in bed.
Another thing I should say, that although I never saw the Master anyway
affected with liquor, he had been drinking freely, and was perhaps
(although he showed it not) a trifle heated.

Anyway, he now practised one of his transitions; and so soon as the door
closed behind my lord, and without the smallest change of voice, shifted
from ordinary civil talk into a stream of insult.

"My dear Henry, it is yours to play," he had been saying, and now
continued: "It is a very strange thing how, even in so small a matter as
a game of cards, you display your rusticity. You play, Jacob, like a
bonnet-laird, or a sailor in a tavern. The same dulness, the same petty
greed, _cette lenteur d'hebete qui me fait rager_; it is strange I
should have such a brother. Even Square-toes has a certain vivacity when
his stake is imperilled; but the dreariness of a game with you I
positively lack language to depict."

Mr. Henry continued to look at his cards, as though very maturely
considering some play; but his mind was elsewhere.

"Dear God, will this never be done?" cries the Master. "_Quel lourdaud!_
But why do I trouble you with French expressions, which are lost on such
an ignoramus? A _lourdaud_, my dear brother, is as we might say a
bumpkin, a clown, a clodpole: a fellow without grace, lightness,
quickness; any gift of pleasing, any natural brilliancy: such a one as
you shall see, when you desire, by looking in the mirror. I tell you
these things for your good, I assure you; and besides,