“Why not?” asked Ravenscar calmly.

“I don’t know. That is, I did not think—Do you know Lady Bellingham?”

“I am relying upon Crewe to present me to her.”

“Oh! It was Crewe who brought you!” said his lordship, a little relieved. “I thought—at least, I wondered—But it doesn’t signify!”

Mr Ravenscar eyed him with a kind of bland surprise. “You seem to be most unaccountably put-out by my arrival, Adrian. What have I done to incur your disapproval?”

Lord Mablethorpe blushed more hotly than ever, and grasped his arm in a quick, friendly gesture. “Oh, Max, you fool! Of course you haven’t done anything! Indeed, I’m very glad to see you! I want to make you known to Miss Grantham. Deb! This is my cousin, Mr Ravenscar. I daresay you will have heard of him. He is a notable gamester, I can tell you!”

Miss Deborah Grantham, encountering Mr Ravenscar’s hard grey eyes, was not sure that she liked him. She acknowledged his bow with the smallest of curtseys, and said lightly: “You are very welcome, sir, and have certainly come to the right house. You know Lord Ormskirk, I believe?”

The middle-aged exquisite and Ravenscar exchanged nods. A large, loose-Embed man, standing on the other side of the table, said, with a twinkle: “Don’t be shy, Mr Ravenscar: we’re all mighty anxious to win your money! But, I warn you, Miss Grantham’s luck is in—isn’t it, me darlin’?—and the bank’s been winning this hour and more.”

“It’s commonly the way of E.O. banks—to win,” remarked a metallic, faintly sneering voice at Ravenscar’s elbow. “Servant, Ravenscar!”

Mr Ravenscar, responding to this salutation, made a mental vow to rescue his cousin from the society into which he had been lured if he had to knock him out and kidnap him to do it. The Earl of Ormskirk, Sir James Filey, and—as a comprehensive glance round the room had informed him—all the more hardened gamesters who frequented Pall Mall and its environs were no fit companions for a youth scarcely out of swaddling-bands. It would, at that moment, have given Mr Ravenscar great pleasure to have seen Miss Grantham standing in the pillory, together with her aunt, and every other brelandiere who seduced green young men to ruin in these polite gaming-houses.