IZ A CLUB-ROOM. 



De R*** investigation, whereby he avowed that when 

 a friend, who had detected the unhappy baron in the 

 act of cheating, asked his advice as to what should be 

 done, he advised him "always to be his partner, or tc 

 back him." 



Perhaps, already he suspects him ; at all events he 

 backs him ; and lo ! he has won, for Tom is shelling 

 out the bank notes to a heavy figure. 



About that other table, larking and laughing mer- 

 rily over their pool at ecart^, are a younger party, 

 Jardinier and the M'Donalds, Dick Gascoigne, and 

 Mount Sandford, Foljambe, and Charley Sutton, all 

 except the first named merry, and more elated with 

 their fun than minding the game, or caring about the 

 winnings ; but Jardinier's brow is bent, and his ex- 

 pression dark and sullen ; his mind is on his winnings, 

 and he plays, as he rides, boldly and very well, but 

 with a cold, ill-natured, sulky resolution, as unlike as 

 possible to the fierce, rash, furious style which marks 

 his rival, equally in daring horsemanship and despe- 

 rate bad temper — the most unpopular man in England, 

 then ill-known as Bellamy, now worse known as Gar- 

 rondale. 



There again, at another whist-table, with his hat 

 pulled down over his dogged, saturnine features, and 

 his dark claret-colored cut-away — that is the clever, 

 wayward, cross, and fitful John George Lambton, not 

 yet Lord Durham ; and opposite to him, with small 

 pinched face, that you scarcely know whether to call 

 plain or handsome, and an air most fastidious, if you 

 should not rather call it contemptuous, sits most ec- 

 centric of all talents, most talented of all eccentrics, 

 Tom Duncombe. 



The very fat man, Lambton's partner, is the bon 

 vivant, the wit, the welter weight, the friend, under 

 an older dynasty of fashion, of Brummel and the 

 prince, and still the cream of the cream of the London 



