And it was even more for the mother than for the daughter that I
was incensed. That daughter did not know him, did but innocently share
his damnable love of chances; but that wife had for years known him at
least as well as I knew him now. Here again I gave him credit for
wishing, though he didn't love her, to spare her what he could. That he
didn't love her I presumed from his indubitable willingness not to stake
her in this afternoon's game. That he never had loved her--had taken her
in his precocious youth simply as a gigantic chance against him, was
likely enough. So much the more credit to him for such consideration as
he showed her, though this was little enough. He could wish to save her
from being a looker-on at his game, but he could--he couldn't not--go on
playing. Assuredly she was right in deeming him at once the strongest
and the weakest of men. "Rather a nervous woman!" I remembered an
engraving that had hung in my room at Oxford, and in scores of other
rooms there: a presentment by Sir Marcus (then Mr.) Stone of a very
pretty young person in a Gainsborough hat, seated beneath an ancestral
elm, looking as though she were about to cry, and entitled "A Gambler's
Wife." Mrs. Pethel was not like that. Of her there were no engravings
for undergraduate hearts to melt at. But there was one man, certainly,
whose compassion was very much at her service. How was he going to
help her?

I know not how many hair's-breadth escapes we may have had
while these thoughts passed through my brain. I had closed my eyes. So
preoccupied was I that but for the constant rush of air against my face I
might, for aught I knew, have been sitting ensconced in an armchair at
home. After a while I was aware that this rush had abated; I opened my
eyes to the old familiar streets of Rouen. We were to have tea at the
Hotel d'Angleterre. What was to be my line of action? Should I