save for your good self. I am begging a taste of tea and a little
biscuit, for I vow I am half famished."

The Lady Catharine Knollys, in sheer reaction from the strain, broke out
into a peal of laughter.

"Sure, he has strange ways about him, this same Mr. Law," said she.
"That young man would have come here direct, and would have made himself
quite at home, methinks, had he had but the first encouragement."

"Gad! Lady Catharine, but he has a conceit of himself. Think you of what
he has done in his short stay here in town! First, as you know, he sat
at cards with two or three of us the other evening--Charlie Castleton,
Beau Wilson, myself and one or two besides. And what doth he do but
stake a bauble against good gold that he would make _sept et le va_."

"And did it?"

"And did it. Yes, faith, as though he saw it coming. Yet 'twas I who cut
and dealt the cards. Nor was that the half of it," he went on. "He let
the play run on till 'twas _seize et le va_, then _vingt-un et le va_,
then twenty-five. And, strike me! Lady Catharine, if he sat not there
cool as my Lord Speaker in the Parliament, and saw the cards run to
_trente et le va_, as though 'twere no more to him than the eating of an
orange!"

"And showed no anxiety at all?"

"None, as I tell you, and he proved to us plain that he had not
two-pence to his name, for that he had been robbed the night before