That child is crying," Sylvia said, pointing at an emaciated little ragamuffin who was rubbing both fists against his eyes. "Oh, do you think I should call Ben to stop and give the boy some pennies?"

"I think not," Rosalind decided. "There are so many others, Sylvie." She looked, troubled, into her cousin's tearstained face and lowered her eyes to the hands in her lap until Sylvia began exclaiming with more cheerfulness at the buildings and conveyances of a more fashionable part of London. She gazed with every bit as much curiosity as the other girl at the imposing mansion in Grosvenor Square at which Ben the coachman, slowed the carriage.

"This be her," Ben was saying to the gawking footman, who had to be prodded in the ribs before he remembered that it was his duty to jump down from the box and knock on the large oak front door facing onto the cobbled courtyard.

Even in the middle of the afternoon there were two games in progress in the card room at Watier's Club. Both groups of players were silently intent upon their hands. The few spectators were hushed too, all of them standing around the table that was farthest from the windows. Here young Darnley was in too deep. Everyone knew that the comfortable competence left him by his father a mere two years ago had been all but dissipated on reckless living. If he did not cut his losses soon, some of them felt, he would be living in dun territory before the summer was over.

The young lord sat forward, his manner careless and relaxed. The only key to his true state of mind was his flushed cheeks and his eyes, which darted constantly from his own hand to the cards held by his companions, as if he could divine what they held if he only looked often enough.

The object of Darnley's most penetrating glances was the man opposite. He sat with a look of cool boredom, one well-manicured hand holding his cards, the other toying with the crystal glass on the table, which held an inch of brandy still. His eyes never once strayed from his cards, not even to glance at the pile of bank notes and vouchers that lay neatly stacked before him.