didn't I take opera-boxes and give her dinners at the restaurateurs,
that's all? But I had a run of luck at the tables, and it was not in
the dinners and opera-boxes that poor Clavering's money went. No, be
hanged to it, it was swep off in another way. One night, at the
countess's, there was several of us at supper--Mr. Bloundell-Bloundell,
the Honorable Deuceace, the Marky de la Tour de Force--all tip-top nobs,
sir, and the height of fashion, when we had supper, and champagne,
you may be sure, in plenty, and then some of that confounded brandy.
I would have it--I would go on at it--the countess mixed the tumblers
of punch for me, and we had cards as well as grog after supper, and I
played and drank until I don't know what I did. I was like I was last
night. I was taken away and put to bed somehow, and never woke until the
next day, to a roaring headache, and to see my servant, who said the
Honorable Deuceace wanted to see me, and was waiting in the sitting-room.
'How are you, colonel?' says he, a-coming into my bedroom. 'How long did
you stay last night after I went away? The play was getting too high for
me, and I'd lost enough to you for one night.'

"'To me', says I, 'how's that, my dear feller? (for though he was an
earl's son, we was as familiar as you and me). How's that, my dear
feller,' says I, and he tells me, that he had borrowed thirty louis of
me at vingt-et-un, that he gave me an I.O.U. for it the night before,
which I put into my pocket-book before he left the room. I takes out
my card-case--it was the countess as worked it for me--and there was
the I.O.U. sure enough, and he paid me thirty louis in gold down upon
the table at my bed-side. So I said he was a gentleman, and asked him
if he would like to take any thing, when my servant should get it for
him; but the Honorable Deuceace don't drink of a morning, and he went
away to some business which he said he had.