t good enough to be recognized as a social equal. He would
instinctively have blackballed McBane had he been proposed by some one
else; with what grace could he put himself forward as the sponsor for
this impossible social aspirant? Moreover, it was clearly a vulgar,
cold-blooded attempt on McBane's part to use his power over him for a
personal advantage.

"Well, now, Captain McBane," returned Delamere diplomatically, "I've
never put any one up yet, and it's not regarded as good form for so
young a member as myself to propose candidates. I'd much rather you'd
ask some older man."

"Oh, well," replied McBane, "just as you say, only I thought you had cut
your eye teeth."

Delamere was not pleased with McBane's tone. His remark was not
acquiescent, though couched in terms of assent. There was a sneering
savagery about it, too, that left Delamere uneasy. He was, in a measure,
in McBane's power. He could not pay the thousand dollars, unless it fell
from heaven, or he could win it from some one else. He would not dare go
to his grandfather for help. Mr. Delamere did not even know that his
grandson gambled. He might not have objected, perhaps, to a gentleman's
game, with moderate stakes, but he would certainly, Tom knew very well,
have looked upon a thousand dollars as a preposterous sum to be lost at
cards by a man who had nothing with which to pay it. It was part of Mr.
Delamere's creed that a gentleman should not make debts that he was not
reasonably able to pay.

There was still another difficulty. If he had lost the money to a
gentleman, and it had been his first serious departure from Mr.
Delamere's perfectly well understood standard of honor, Tom might have
risked a confession and thrown himself on his grandfather's mercy; but
he owed other sums here and there, which, to his just now much disturbed
imagination, loomed up in alarming number and amount. He had recently
observed signs of coldness, too, on the part of certain members of the
club. Moreover, like most men with one commanding vice, he was addicted
to several subsidiary forms of iniquity, which in case of a scandal were
more than likely to come to light. He was clearly and most disagreeably
caught in the net of his own hypocrisy. His grandfather believed him a
model of integrity, a pattern of honor; he could not afford to have his
grandfather undeceived.

He thought of old Mrs. Ochiltree. If she were a liberal soul, she could
give him a thousand dollars n