After that he stood watching while Mr. Thomasson opened the door and

bowed her out; and this done and the door closed after her, 'Lord, what

ceremony!' he said, with an ugly sneer. 'Is't real, man, or are you

bubbling her? And what is this Cock-lane story of a chaise and the rest?

Out with it, unless you want to be tossed in a blanket.' 'True, upon my honour!' Mr. Thomasson asseverated.

'Oh, but Tommy, the fortune?' Lord Almeric protested seriously. 'I vow

you are sharping us.' 'True too, my lord, as I hope to be saved!' 'True? Oh, but it is too monstrous absurd,' my lord wailed. 'The Little

Masterson? As pretty a little tit as was to be found in all Oxford. The

Little Masterson a fortune?' 'She has eyes and a shape,' Mr. Pomeroy admitted generously. 'For the

rest, what is the figure, Mr. Thomasson?' he continued. 'There are

fortunes and fortunes.' Mr. Thomasson looked at the gallery above, and thence, and slyly, to

his companions and back again to the gallery; and swallowed something

that rose in his throat. At length he seemed to make up his mind to

speak the truth, though when he did so it was in a voice little above a

whisper. 'Fifty thousand,' he said, and looked guiltily round him.

Lord Almeric rose from his chair as if on springs. 'Oh, I protest!' he

said. 'You are roasting us. Fifty thousand! It's a bite?' But Mr. Thomasson nodded. 'Fifty thousand,' he repeated softly. 'Fifty

thousand.' 'Pounds?' gasped my lord. 'The Little Masterson?' The tutor nodded again; and without asking leave, with a dogged air

unlike his ordinary bearing when he was in the company of those above

him, he drew a decanter towards him, and filling a glass with a shaking

hand raised it to his lips and emptied it. The three were on their feet

round the table, on which several candles, luridly lighting up their

faces, still burned; while others had flickered down, and smoked in the

guttering sockets, among the empty bottles and the litter of cards. In

one corner of the table the lees of wine had run upon the oak, and

dripped to the floor, and formed a pool, in which a broken glass lay in

fragments beside the overturned chair. An observant eye might have found

on the panels below the gallery the vacant nails and dusty lines whence

Lelys and Knellers, Cuyps and Hondekoeters had looked down on two

generations of Pomeroys. But in the main the disorder of the scene

centred in the small table and the three men standing round it; a

lighted group, islanded in the shadows of the hall.




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