and there, and there," turning over the pages; "her
name adorns a dozen leaves, my fine buckskin. And it will be well to
have some truth about her. Enter the wager, Brooks."

"Hold!" shouts Bolingbroke; "I haven't accepted."

You may be sure I was in an agony over this desecration, which I was so
powerless to prevent. But as I was thanking my stars that the matter had
blown over with Bolingbroke's rejection, there occurred a most singular
thing.

The figure on the lounge, with vast difficulty, sat up. To our amazement
we beheld the bloated face of the Duke of Chartersea staring stupidly.

"Damme, Bully, you refushe bet like tha'!" he said. "I'll take doshen of
'em-doshen, egad. Gimme the book, Brooksh. Cursh Fox--lay thousand d--d
provinshial never getsh 'er--I know--"

I sat very still, seized with a loathing beyond my power to describe to
thick that this was the man Mr. Manners was forcing her to marry. Fox
laughed.

"Help his Grace to his coach," he said to two of the footmen.

"Kill fellow firsht!" cried his Grace, with his hand on his sword, and
instantly fell over, and went sound asleep.

"His Grace has sent his coach home, your honour," said one of the men,
respectfully. "The duke is very quarrelsome, sir."

"Put him in a chair, then," said Charles.

So they fearfully lifted his Grace, who was too far gone to resist, and
carried him to a chair. And Mr. Fox bribed the chairmen with two guineas
apiece, which he borrowed from me, to set his Grace down amongst the
marketwomen at Covent Garden.

The next morning Banks found in my pockets something over seven hundred
pounds more than I had had the day before.

I rose late, my head swimming with mains and nicks, and combinations
of all the numbers under the dozen; debated whether or no I would go to
Arlington Street, and decided that I had not the courage. Comyn settled
it by coming in his cabriolet, proposed that we should get the air
in the park, dine at the Cocoa Tree, and go afterwards to Lady
Tankerville's drum-major, where Dolly would undoubtedly be.

"Now you are here, Richard," said his Lordship, with his accustomed
bluntness, "and your sea-captain has relieved your Quixotic conscience,
what the deuce do you intend to do?

"Win a thousand pounds every night at Brooks's, or improve your time
and do your duty, and get Miss Manners out of his Grace's clutches? I'll
warrant something will come of that matter this morning."

"I hope so," I said shor