playing for nothing; and Losely saw at a glance that the man was, nevertheless, trying to cheat the woman. Positively he took that man into more respect; and that man, noticing the interest with which Losely surveyed the game, looked up, and said, "While the time, Sir? What say you? A game or two? I can stake my pistoles—that is, Sir, so far as a fourpenny bit goes. If ignorant of this French game, Sir, cribbage or all-fours."
"No," said Losely, mournfully; "there is nothing to be got out of you; otherwise—" He stopped and sighed. "But I have seen you under other circumstances. What has become of your Theatrical Exhibition? Gambled it away? Yet, from what I see of your play, I think you ought not to have lost, Mr. Rugge."
The ex-manager started.
"What! You knew me before the Storm!—before the lightning struck me, as I may say, Sir—and falling into difficulties, I became—a wreck? You knew me?—not of the Company?—a spectator?"
"As you say—a spectator. You had once in your employ an actor—clever old fellow. Waife, I think, he was called."
"Ha! hold! At that name, Sir, my wounds bleed afresh. From that execrable name, Sir, there hangs a tale!"
"Indeed! Then it will be a relief to you to tell it," said Losely, resettling his feet on the hob, and snatching at any diversion from his own reflections.
"Sir, when a gentleman, who is a gentleman, asks, as a favor, a specimen of my powers of recital, not professionally, and has before him the sparkling goblet, which he does not invite me to share, he insults my fallen fortunes. Sir, I am poor—I own it; I have fallen into the sere and yellow leaf, Sir; but I have still in this withered bosom the heart of a Briton!"
"Warm it, Mr. Rugge. Help yourself to the brandy—and lady too."
"Sir, you are a gentleman; Sir, your health. Hag, drink better days to us both. That woman, Sir, is a hag, but she is an honor to her sex—faithful!"
"It is astonishing how faithful ladies are when not what is called beautiful. I speak from painful experience," said Losely, growing debonnair as the liquor relaxed his gloom, and regaining that levity of tongue which sometimes strayed into wit, and which, springing originally from animal spirits and redundant health—still came to him mechanically whenever roused by companionship from alternate intervals of lethargy and pain.
