The other nymphs of the Spa held a little back, upon the principle of that politeness, which, at continental hunting parties, affords the first shot at a fine piece of game, to the person of the highest rank present; but the thought throbbed in many a fair bosom, that their ladyships might miss their aim, in spite of the advantages thus allowed them, and that there might then be room for less exalted, but perhaps not less skilful, markswomen, to try their chance.
But while the Earl thus withdrew from public society, it was necessary, at least natural, that he should choose some one with whom to share the solitude of his own apartment; and Mowbray, superior in rank to the half-pay whisky-drinking Captain MacTurk; in dash to Winterblossom, who was broken down, and turned twaddler; and in tact and sense to Sir Bingo Binks, easily manoeuvred himself into his lordship's more intimate society; and internally thanking the honest footpad, whose bullet had been the indirect means of secluding his intended victim from all society but his own, he gradually began to feel the way, and prove the strength of his antagonist, at the various games of skill and hazard which he introduced, apparently with the sole purpose of relieving the tedium of a sick-chamber.
Meiklewham, who felt, or affected, the greatest possible interest in his patron's success, and who watched every opportunity to enquire how his schemes advanced, received at first such favourable accounts as made him grin from ear to ear, rub his hands, and chuckle forth such bursts of glee as only the success of triumphant roguery could have extorted from him.

Mowbray looked grave, however, and checked his mirth.
"There was something in it after all," he said, "that he could not perfectly understand.

Etherington, an used hand--d----d sharp--up to every thing, and yet he lost his money like a baby." "And what the matter how he loses it, so you win it like a man ?" said his legal friend and adviser.
"Why, hang it, I cannot tell," replied Mowbray--"were it not that I think he has scarce the impudence to propose such a thing to succeed, curse me but I should think he was coming the old soldier over me, and keeping up his game .-- But no--he can scarce have the impudence to think of that .-- I find, however, that he has done Wolverine--cleaned out poor Tom--though Tom wrote to me the precise contrary, yet the truth has since come out--Well, I shall avenge him, for I see his lordship is to be had as well as other folk." "Weel, Mr.Mowbray," said the lawyer, in a tone of affected sympathy, "ye ken your own ways best--but the heavens will bless a moderate mind.
I would not like to see you ruin this poor lad, _funditus_, that is to say, out and out.

To lose some of the ready will do him no great harm, and maybe give him a lesson he may be the better of as long as he lives--but I wad not, as an honest man, wish you to go deeper--you should spare the lad, Mr.Mowbray." "Who spared _me_, Meiklewham ?" said Mowbray, with a look and tone of deep emphasis--"No, no--he must go through the mill--money and money's worth .-- His seat is called Oakendale--think of that, Mick--Oakendale! Oh, name of thrice happy augury!--Speak not of mercy, Mick--the squirrels of Oakendale must be dismounted, and learn to go a-foot .-- What mercy can the wandering lord of Troy expect among the Greeks ?--The Greeks!--I am a very Suliote--the bravest of Greeks.
'I think not of pity, I think not of fear, He neither must know who would serve the Vizier.' And necessity, Mick," he concluded, with a tone something altered, "necessity is as unrelenting a leader as any Vizier or Pacha, whom Scanderbeg ever fought with, or Byron has sung." Meiklewham echoed his patron's ejaculation with a sound betwixt a whine, a chuckle, and a groan; the first being designed to express his pretended pity for the destined victim; the second his sympathy with his patron's prospects of success; and the third being a whistle admonitory of the dangerous courses through which his object was to be pursued.
Suliote as he boasted himself, Mowbray had, soon after this conversation, some reason to admit that, "When Greek meets Greek, then comes the tug of war." The light skirmishing betwixt the parties was ended, and the serious battle commenced with some caution on either side; each perhaps, desirous of being master of his opponent's system of tactics, before exposing his own.

Piquet, the most beautiful game at which a man can make sacrifice of his fortune, was one with which Mowbray had, for his misfortune perhaps, been accounted, from an early age, a great proficient, and in which the Earl of Etherington, with less experience, proved no novice.