‘It is the most unaccountable thing in
nature!’
Then, after a reverie of some seconds, the young gentleman
applied himself energetically to his toilet; and coming
down to his sitting-room, he looked into his morning
paper, and then into the street, and told the servant
as he sate down to breakfast, that he expected a gentleman
named Wylder to call that morning, and to be sure
to show him up directly.
Captain Lake’s few hours’ sleep, contrary
to popular ideas about gamesters’ slumbers,
had been the soundest and the most natural which he
had enjoyed for a good many nights. He was refreshed.
At Gylingden and Brandon he had been simulating Captain
Stanley Lake—being, in truth, something
quite different—with a vigilant histrionic
effort which was awfully exhausting, and sometimes
nearly intolerable. Here the captain was perceptibly
stealing into his old ways and feelings. His spirit
revived; something like confidence in the future, and
a possibility even of enjoying the present, was struggling
visibly through the cold fog that environed him.
Reason has, after all, so little to do with our moods.
The weather, the scene, the stomach, how pleasantly
they deal with facts—how they supersede
philosophy, and even arithmetic, and teach us how much
of life is intoxication and illusion.
Still there was the sword of Damocles over his pineal
gland. D—— that sheer, cold
blade! D—— him that forged it!
Still there was a great deal of holding in a horse-hair.
Had not salmon, of I know not how many pounds’
weight, been played and brought to land by that slender
towage. There is the sword, a burnished piece
of cutlery, weighing just so many pounds; and the
horsehair has sufficed for an hour, and why not for
another—and soon? Hang moping and nonsense!
Waiter, another pint of Chian; and let the fun go
forward.
So the literal waiter knocked at the door. ’A
person wanted to see Captain Lake. No, it was
not Mr. Wylder. It was the man who had been here
in the morning—Dutton is his name.’
‘And so it is really half-past eleven?’
said Lake, in a sleepy surprise. ‘Let him
come in.’
And so in comes Jim Dutton again, to hear particulars,
and have, as he hopes, his engagement ratified.
LAWYER LARKIN’S MIND BEGINS TO WORK.
That morning Lake’s first report upon his inquisition
into the whereabouts of Mark Wylder—altogether
disappointing and barren—reached Lord Chelford
in a short letter; and a similar one, only shorter,
found Lawyer Larkin in his pleasant breakfast parlour.
Now this proceeding of Mr. Wylder’s, at this
particular time, struck the righteous attorney, and
reasonably, as a very serious and unjustifiable step.
There was, in fact, no way of accounting for it, that
was altogether complimentary to his respected and
nutritious client. Yes; there was something every
way very serious in the affair. It actually
threatened the engagement which was so near its accomplishment.
Some most powerful and mysterious cause must undoubtedly
be in operation to induce so sharp a ‘party,’
so keen after this world’s wealth, to risk so
huge a prize. Whatever eminent qualities Mark
Wylder might be deficient in, the attorney very well
knew that cunning was not among the number.
