a man gains by going into the house," said
Calder Jones. "I couldn't help myself as it happened, but, upon my
word it's a deuce of a bore. A fellow thinks he can do as he likes
about going,--but he can't. It wouldn't do for me to give it up,
because--"

"Oh no, of course not; where should we all be?" said Vavasor.

"It's you and me, Grindems," said Maxwell. "D---- parliament, and now
let's have a rubber."

They played till three and Mr Calder Jones lost a good deal of
money,--a good deal of money in a little way, for they never played
above ten-shilling points, and no bet was made for more than a pound
or two. But Vavasor was the winner, and when he left the room he
became the subject of some ill-natured remarks.

"I wonder he likes coming in here," said Grindley, who had himself
been the man to invite him to belong to the club, and who had at one
time indulged the ambition of an intimacy with George Vavasor.

"I can't understand it," said Calder Jones, who was a little bitter
about his money. "Last year he seemed to walk in just when he liked,
as though he were one of us."

"He's a bad sort of fellow," said Grindley; "he's so uncommonly dark.
I don't know where on earth he gets his money from, He was heir to
some small property in the north, but he lost every shilling of that
when he was in the wine trade."

"You're wrong there, Grindems," said Maxwell,--making use of a
playful nickname which he had invented for his friend. "He made a pot
of money at the wine business, and had he stuck to it he would have
been a rich man."

"He's lost it all since then, and that place in the north into the
bargain."

"Wrong again, Grindems, my boy. If old Vavasor were to die to-morrow,
Vavasor Hall would go just as he might choose to leave it. George may
be a ruined man for aught I know--"

"There's no doubt about that, I believe," said Grindley.

"Perhaps not, Grindems; but he can't have lost Vavasor Hall because
he has never as yet had an interest in it. He's the natural heir, and
will probably get it some day."

"All the same," said Calder Jones, "isn't it rather odd he should
come in here?"

"We've asked him often enough," said Maxwell; "not because we like
him, but because we want him so often to make up a rubber. I don't
like George Vavasor, and I don't know who does; but I like him
better than dummy. And I'd sooner play whist with men I don't like,
Grindems, than I'd not play at all." A bystander might have th