A matter of five minutes and we shall be at my cousin's house." "It is very kind of Mrs.St.Pierre Lawrence," answered Barebone, "to--well, to take me up.

I suppose that is the best way to look at it." Colville laughed quietly.
"Yes--put it thus, if you like," he said.

They walked on in silence for a few yards, and then Dormer Colville slipped his hand within his companion's arm, as was the fashion among men even in England in those more expansive days.
"I think I know how you feel," he said, suiting his step to Barebone's.
"You must feel like a man who is set down to a table to play a game of which he knows nothing, and on taking up his cards finds that he holds a hand all court-cards and trumps--and he doesn't know how to play them." Barebone made no answer.

He had yet to unlearn Captain Clubbe's unconscious teaching that a man's feelings are his own concern and no other has any interest or right to share in them, except one woman, and even she must guess the larger half.
"But as the game progresses," went on Colville, reassuringly, "you will find out how it is played.

You will even find that you are a skilled player, and then the gambler's spirit will fire your blood and arouse your energies.