did. He and Philip had found Captain Lennox and Lord Camberley in the

billiard-room of the Rose and Crown Hotel--Master Philip being too fond of idling away his hours, and just now it was a very slack time at the office. Lennox at once introduced Mr. Bootle to his lordship, and he condescended to be gracious to the little man, whose income was popularly supposed to be of fabulous extent. Philip he knew to nod to; but the two were not much acquainted. The Captain proposed that they should all go home and dine with him at The Lilacs, and he at once scribbled a note to his sister, Mrs. Ducie, that she might be prepared for their arrival.

Lord Camberley was a good-looking, slim-built, dark-complexioned man of eight-and-twenty. He had a small black moustache, his hair was cropped very short, and he was fond of sport as connected with the racecourse. By his father's death a few months ago he had come into a fortune of nine thousand a year. He lived, when in the country, at Camberley Park, a grand old Elizabethan mansion about five miles from Nullington, where his aunt, the Honourable Mrs. Featherstone, kept house for him.

It was at the billiard-table that he and Lennox had first met. A billiard-table is like a sea voyage: it brings people together for a short time on a sort of common level, and acquaintanceships spring up which under other circumstances would never have had an existence. The advantage is that you can drop them again when the game is over, or the voyage at an end: though people do not always care to do that. In the dull little town of Nullington the occasional society of a man like Captain Lennox seemed to Lord Camberley an acquisition not to be despised. They had many tastes and sympathies in common. The Captain was always well posted up in the state of the odds; in fact, he made a little book of his own on most of the big events of the year. There were few better judges of the points of a horse or a dog than he. Then he could be familiar without being presuming: Lord Camberley, who never forgot that he was a lord, hated people who presumed. Lennox, in fact, was a "deuced nice fellow," as he more than once told his aunt. Meanwhile he cultivated his society a good deal: he could always drop him when he grew tired of him, and it was his lordship's way to grow tired of everybody before long.

Five minutes after they had assembled Margaret Ducie entered the room. Lord Camberley had seen her several times previously, but to Bootle and Philip she was a stranger. Her brother introduced them. There was perhaps a shade more cordiality in the greeting she accorded to Bootle than in the one she vouchsafed to Philip. Camberley, the cynical, who was looking on, and who prided himself, with or without cause, on his knowledge of the sex, muttered under his breath, "She knows already which is the rich man and which the poor clerk. Lennox must have put her up to that."

Mrs. Ducie was a brunette. She had a great quantity of jet-black silky hair, and large black liquid eyes. Her nose was thin, high-bred, and aquiline, and she rarely spoke without smiling. Her figure was tall and somewhat meagre in its outlines; but whether she sat, or stood, or walked, every movement and every pose was instinct with a sort of picturesque and unstudied grace. She dressed very quietly, and when abroad her almost invariable wear was a gown of some plain black material. But about that simple garment there was a style, a fit, a suspicion of something in cut or trimming, in the elaboration of a flounce here or the addition of a furbelow there, that to the observant mind hinted at the latest Parisian audacity, and of secrets which as yet were scarcely whispered beyond Mayfair. The ladies of Nullington and its neighbourhood could only envy and admire, and imitate afar off.

Mrs. Ducie was one of those women whose age it is next to impossible to guess correctly. "She's thirty if she's a day," Lord Camberley had said to himself, within five minutes of his introduction to her. "She can't possibly be more than three-and-twenty," was Philip Cleeve's verdict to-day. The truth, in all probability, lay somewhere between the two.

Whatever her age might be, Lord Camberley had a great admiration for Mrs. Ducie, but it was after a fashion of his own. He was thoroughly artificial himself, and rustic beauty, or simplicity eating bread and butter in a white frock, had no charms for him. He liked a woman who had seen and studied the world of "men and manners;" and that Mrs. Ducie had travelled much, and seen many phases of life, he was beginning by this time to discover. He was on his guard when he first made her acquaintance, lest he might be walking into a matrimonial trap, artfully baited by herself and her brother; for Lord Camberley was a mark for anxious mothers and daughters: not but that he felt himself quite capable of looking after his own interests on that point. Still, however wide-awake a man may believe himself to be, it is always best to be wary in this crafty world; and very wary he was the first three or four times he visited The Lilacs. He was not long, however, in perceiving that, whatever matrimonial designs Margaret Ducie might or might not have elsewhere, she was without any as far as he was concerned; and from that time he felt at ease in the cottage.

Captain Lennox's little dinners were thoroughly French in style and cookery. They were good without being over-elaborate. Camberley's idea was that the pretty widow, despite her white and delicate hands, was oftener in the kitchen than most people imagined. When dinner was over, the gentlemen adjourned to the verandah to smoke their cigars and sip their coffee; while in the drawing-room, the French windows of which were open to the garden lighted only by one shaded lamp, Margaret sat and played in a minor key such softly languishing airs, chiefly from the old masters, as accorded well with the September twilight and the _far niente_ feeling induced by a choice dinner.

Philip Cleeve felt like a man who dreams and is yet awake. Never before had he been in the company of a woman like Mrs. Ducie. There was a seductive witchery about her such as he had no previous knowledge of. It was not that she took more notice of him than of anyone else--it maybe that she took less; but he fell under the influence of that subtle magnetism, so difficult to define, and yet so very evil in its effects, which some women exercise over some men, perhaps without any wish or intention on their part of doing so. In the case of Philip it was a sort of mental intoxication, delicious and yet with a hidden pain in it, and with a vague underlying sense of unrest and dissatisfaction for which he was altogether unable to account.

After a time somebody proposed cards--probably it was Camberley--and as no one objected, they all went indoors.

"What are we going to play?--whist?" queried Lennox, while the servant was arranging the table.

"Nothing so slow as whist, I hope," said his lordship. "A quiet hand at 'Nap' would be more to my taste."

"How say you, gentlemen? I suppose we all play that vulgar but fascinating game?" said the Captain.

"I know a little of it," answered Bootle.

"I have only played it once," said Philip.

"If you have played once, it's as good as having played it a thousand times," said Camberley, dogmatically. "I'm not over-brilliant at cards myself, but I picked up Napoleon in ten minutes."

"Shilling points, I suppose?" said Lennox.

Camberley shrugged his shoulders, but said nothing, and they all sat down.

There was an arched recess in the room, fitted with an ottoman. It was Mrs. Ducie's favourite seat. Here she sat now, engaged on some piece of delicate embroidery, looking on, and smiling, and giving utterance to an occasional word or two between the deals, but not interrupting them.

Philip Cleeve, notwithstanding that he was less conversant with the game than his companions, and that the black eyes of Mrs. Ducie would persist in coming between him and his cards--he could see her from where he sat almost without a turn of his head--was very fortunate in the early part of the evening, carrying all before him. He found himself, at the end of an hour and a half's play, a winner of close on three sovereigns, which to a narrow pocket seems a considerable sum.

"This is too sleepy!" cried Camberley at last. "Can't we pile up the agony a bit, eh, Lennox?"

"I'm in your hands," said the Captain.

"What say you, Mr. Bootle?" queried his lordship. "Shall we turn our shillings into half-crowns? That will afford a little more excitement, eh?"

"Then a little more excitement let us have by all means," answered good-natured Freddy, who cared not whether he lost or won.

But now Philip's luck seemed at once to desert him. What with the extra wine he had taken, and the glamour cast over him by the proximity of Mrs. Ducie, his judgment became entirely at fault. In half an hour he had lost back the whole of his winnings; a little later still, his pockets were empty. It is true he only had two sovereigns about him at starting, so that his loss was not a heavy one; but it was quite heavy enough for him. He was hesitating what he should do next--whether borrow of Bootle or Lennox--when all at once he remembered that he had money about him. In the course of the day he had collected an account amounting to twenty pounds, due to Mr. Tiplady, and it was still in his possession. He felt relieved at once. There was a chance of winning back what he had lost. With a hand that shook a little he poured out some wine and water at the side-table, and then sat down to resume his play.

When the clock on the chimney-piece chimed eleven, Lord Camberley threw down his cards, saying he would play no more, and Philip Cleeve found himself with a solitary half-sovereign left in his pocket.

He got up, feeling stunned and giddy, and stepped out through the French window into the verandah. Here he was presently joined by the rest. Lennox thrust a cigar into his hand, and they all lighted up. The night was sultry; but after the warmth of the drawing-room such fresh air as there was seemed welcome to all of them. They went slowly down the main walk of the garden towards the little fish-pond at the end, Camberley and Mrs. Ducie, for she had strolled out too, being a little behind the others.

"I am going to drive my drag to the Agricultural Show at Norwich next Tuesday," said his lordship to her. "Lennox has promised to go. May I hope that you will honour me with your company on the box seat on the occasion?"

"Who is going beside yourself and Ferdinand?" she asked.

"Captain Maudesley, and Pierpoint. Sir John Fenn will probably pack himself inside with his gout."

"But the other ladies--who are they?"

"Um--well, to tell you the truth, I had not thought about asking any other lady."

"Ah! Then, I'm not sure that I should care to go with you, Lord Camberley. Five gentlemen and one lady--that would never do."

"Let me beg of you to reconsider----"

"Pray do nothing of the kind. I would rather not."

"I am awfully sorry," said his lordship, in something of a huff. "Confound this cigar! And confound such old-fashioned prudish notions!" he added to himself. "I'd not have thought it of her."

She walked back, after saying a pleasant word or two, and fell into conversation with Philip Cleeve. He seemed distrait. She thought he had taken enough champagne, and felt rather sorry for the young fellow.

"Do you never feel dull, Mrs. Ducie," he asked, "now that you have come to live among the sand-hills?"

"Oh no. The people I have been introduced to here are all very nice and kind; and then I have my ponies, you know; and there's my music, and my box from Mudie's once a month; so that I have not much time for ennui. My tastes are neither very æsthetic nor very elevated, Mr. Cleeve."

"They are at least agreeable ones," answered Philip.

As Philip Cleeve walked home a war of feelings was at work within him, such as he had never experienced before. On the one hand there was the loss of Mr. Tiplady's twenty pounds; which must be made good tomorrow morning. He turned hot and cold when he thought of what he had done. He knew it was wrong, dishonourable--what you will. How he came to do it he could not tell--just as we all say when the apple's eaten and only the bitter taste left. He must ask his mother to make good the loss; but it would never do to tell her the real facts of the case. He should not like her to think him dishonourable--and she was not well, and it would vex her terribly. He must go to her with some sort of excuse--a poor one would do, so utterly unsuspicious was she. This was humiliation indeed. He was almost ready to take a vow never to touch a card again. Almost; but not quite.

On the other hand, his thoughts would fly off to Margaret Ducie and her thousand nameless witcheries. There was quite a wild fever in his blood when he dwelt on her. It seemed a month since he had last seen and spoken with Maria Kettle--Maria, that sweet, pale abstraction, who seemed to him to-night so unsubstantial and far away. But he did not want to think of her just now. He wanted to forget that he was engaged to her, or as good as engaged. Though some innate voice of conscience whispered that, if he valued his own peace of mind, it would be well for him to keep out of the way of the beautiful ignis fatuus which had shone on his path to-night for the first time.