Page:Lady Barbarity; a romance (IA ladybarbarityrom00snai).pdf/192

 Prue. That reverential tone she uses in them is another of her freaks, you see, dear aunt."

Alas! this straw was altogether too much for the poor indignant camel.

"Barbara!" says my aunt, "I desire you to forego in the future all intercourse with this—this person."

Meantime Miss Prue and my papa, the Earl, were becoming perilously intimate. There was a stream of brimming wine-pledging wit that flowed between them, very entrancing and alluring, to a favourite toast, who sat outside the pale of it talking to her aunt.

What a pair they made, this old beau masquerading as a young one, and this nameless, tattered beggar masquerading as his mistress! And life or death was the stake for which he, poor lad, played. I could not bear to think of his position. It turned my bosom cold. But how consummate was his game! With what genius and spirit did he conduct it! And I think I never saw such courage, for it must have called for a higher fortitude than any of the battlefield. Looking on this pair in the wonder of my heart I was far too fired in the brave lad's cause, not to mention the urgence of my own, to once forget the Captain fretting solitary in his bonds. Therefore I remembered that my hour for action was at hand.

After the meal, I waited till this trio were seated at the cards; then having lent Prue a sufficiency of money to enable her to play, I told my aunt that