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204 WILD MARGARET.
‘*Yes—I know,”’ said the marquis, stammeringly; ‘‘ but
- other fellows have had fevers, and they don’t cut up like
that. I had the fever—no,I think it was measles, or
mumps, or something, but I pulled round all right, and
was as jolly as a sandboy after all. It isn’t the fever
that’s done it, Floyd; there’s something else, depend upon
it. ner’ has he been all this time? nobody knows ex
actly.’’
_ “You'd better ask him,” said the colonel, with grim
irony.
‘Ask him!’’ stuttered the marquis; ‘‘I dare say! I
expect I should get my head snapped off! Some fellow
said something about Paris yesterday, and turning to
Blair, said: ‘But you were there then, weren’t you,
Blair?’ and Blair just turned and glared at him as if he was
‘going to eat him! No, by George, you bet I don’t ask
him anything!’’ .
‘* Perhaps you'd better not,” assented the colonel. ‘‘ Dis-
cretion is the better part of valor. But hejisn’t alwayslike
‘this, is he?’ he asked, in an undertone.
‘*No, not always,’’ replied Aldmere. ‘‘He’ll wake up
presently and pull himself together, and then he'll go into
the dining-room and order some dinner, and as like as nob
when it comes he’l] march out and leave it! Iveseen him
do it two or three times, by Jove! and then later on_he’l
.take a big drink, and when he’s livened up a bit, he’ll go
down to the Green Table.’’ ;
The colonel whistled. The Green Table was the fashion-
able gaming club, and the proprietor might appropriately
have inscribed over its handsome stone doorway, ‘‘ Aban-
don hope, all ye who enter here!” for many a man
had found cause to rue the hour in which he passed its
portals.
There was no more dangerous place in all London than
the Green Table, and Colonel Floyd’s whistle was not by
any means superfluous. =
‘* And does he win?’ he asked. - Ss
“Sometimes, but not often,” replied the marquis.
‘Loses four nights out of five. Seems to have lost his
game, too. You know how good he was at most things?
Hirst rate all round man, you know. But now he seems
to have lost his head, and plays like a man in a dream.
a “mn miss two points at baccarat last night. Poor ol
air
‘* Poor old Blair!” echoed the colonel. ‘‘Can’t some-
thing be done?”’
The young marquis shook his head sadly.
Who could do anything? In the old times, Blair was
as good-natured a fellow as you’d meet in a day’s walk;