Page:The Mating of the Blades.djvu/68

 which, rightly as he added bitterly in his thoughts, had cast him out as a cad, but between himself and Jane Warburton. For, quite suddenly, and with a sort of savage, hurtful pride, he knew that he loved her, that he wanted and needed her, that she was dearer to him than the dwelling of kings. His love was as his hate, like Autumn rain, the kind which one does not see but which one feels, unceasing, penetrating, slightly chilling, and he knew that if she should ask him again: “Is it true? Did you cheat at cards?” there would be the terrible temptation to reply:

“No. I took the blame—before the world. But it was my brother Tollemache who marked the pack.”

And there was the promise he had given to his father, and all his stiff, surly, wiredrawn moral rectitude with which to back it up.

“I can never see her again!”

He said it with a loud voice, very much to the surprise, followed by ribald comments, of half-a-dozen cab drivers huddled around a coffee stand on the south side of Soho Square.

India!

There lay the solution. Now more than ever; and he went straight to his shabby hotel in Moor Street and made ready for bed.

The next moment he was face to face with a catastrophe. The fifty pounds, every penny he possessed in the world with the exception of a few shillings in his trousers, had disappeared from his coat.

His first impulse was to blame the roug