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"I dropped two hundred in ready money at the Little Coventry last night, and gave a check for three hundred more. On her ladyship's bankers, too, for to-morrow; and I must meet it, for there'll be the deuce to pay else. The last time she paid my play-debts, I swore I would not touch a dice-box again, and she'll keep her word, Strong, and dissolve partnership, if I go on.

I daresay they do the savages no harm. Ay, ay, Eau-deuce; that must mean the white brandy, which may well enough be called the deuce, for deuced stuff it is!" "The signification of Eau-douce is sweet-water, and it is the manner in which the French express fresh-water," rejoined Jasper, a little nettled. "And how the devil do they make water out of Eau-in-deuce, when it means brandy in Eau-de-vie?

So away went the amorous musicians, favoured by the darkness, and talking in an undertone, and thinking more than they talked, while little Puddock, from under his cloak, scratched a faint little arpeggio and a chord, ever and anon, upon 'the inthrument. When they reached the ferry, the boat was tied at the near side, but deuce a ferryman could they see.

The 'walk in' was uttered with closed teeth, and expressed the sentiment, 'Go to the Deuce: even the gate over which he leant manifested no sympathising movement to the words; and I think that circumstance determined me to accept the invitation: I felt interested in a man who seemed more exaggeratedly reserved than myself.

"There's the deuce to pay down there, Miles one boat pulling this-a-way, for life or death, and another a'ter it. The shot was intended for the leading boat, and not for us." This brought my glass down, too. Sure enough, there was a small boat pulling straight for us, and of course directly to windward of the frigate; the men in it exerting every nerve.

"Say, Miss Forsyth I'm keen on running away but what the deuce from? Who's that fellow following us why are you afraid?" He flung the words jerkily, sideways, at Robin. "I'll tell you afterwards," Robin gasped back. The wind whistled past her, she lost her hat.

Then, when the hero clasps "her" to his heart in one last wild embrace and stifles a sob, I feel as sad as though I had dealt at whist and turned up only a deuce; and when the heroine dies in the end I weep. If I read the same tale early in the morning I should sneer at it. Digestion, or rather indigestion, has a marvelous effect upon the heart.

On the way Boyce talked gaily of Marigold's gallantry, of the boy's spirit, of the idiotic way in which impossible horses were being foisted on newly formed cavalry units. When we drew up at my front door, it occurred to me that there was no Marigold in attendance. "How the deuce," said I, "am I going to get out?" Boyce laughed. "I don't think I'll drop you."

Hum! no horses, no vices, no dancers, no yacht; you confound one's notions of nobility, and I ought to know them, for I have to patch them all up a bit just before they go to the deuce." "But I have, Doctor Aberford." "What!" "A yacht! and a clipper she is, too." "Ah! "In the Bay of Biscay she lay half a point nearer the wind than Lord Heavyjib." "Oh! bother Lord Heavyjib, and his Bay of Biscay."

"Yes, if he had been like that I should never have left him and all this would not have happened," she thought again; "and if I had been like this would he ever have quarrelled with me?" she asked herself the instant afterwards. And Gay, walking at her side, but separated by a mental universe, was thinking resentfully, "The deuce of it is that it might just as well never have happened!