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He was playing; it was not very good taste, but there were some men who preferred a quiet rubber to looking at princes or the antics of boys and girls, and he wished to oblige his friends. "Can you give me a moment, Le Grice?" said Lord Camberwell, coming into the card-room. "I have had a most extraordinary letter. It accuses Gilly Jillingham "
So it fell out, and they also were married before the end of the year. Mean as had been their conduct towards Mrs. Purling and her son, Phillipa and her husband were not to be classed with common adventurers of the ordinary type. Born in a lower station, Gilly Jillingham might have taken honours as a "prig"; in his own with less luck he might have been an Ishmaelite generally shunned.
Is the reward worth taking, I wonder?" For a moment she held him at bay. "Suppose I were to refuse you now at the eleventh hour? It is for you to sue. I am not what I was. Mrs. Purling calls me the heiress of the Purlings, and we may not consider Mr. Gilbert Jillingham a very eligible parti." "You dare not refuse me, Phillipa," said Gilly very seriously.
To all outward seeming there was no more fortunate prosperous man about town; the hard shifts to which he had been put at times were known only to himself and to one other man, who had caught him tripping once, and found his account in the fact. The pressure this man excited drove Gilly Jillingham nearly to despair.
"The first consequence will be that I shall give you in charge. Be off!" "You shall have a week to think better of it." Gilly rang the bell. "Shall I send for a policeman, or will you go?" He went, muttering imprecations intermixed with threats; but Gilly Jillingham, quite proud of his courage, seemed for the moment callous to both. He little dreamt how soon the latter would be put into effect.
It cost her more than a passing pang to remember that she had robbed Harold Purling of his birthright, and had turned to her own base purpose the foolish cravings of the silly mother's heart. But she had put aside self-upbraiding when she met her lover in town. "Faith, you are a trump, Phillipa; but it's not much too soon. When will you take your reward?" "Meaning Mr. Jillingham?
Purling as much as told me that if her son married this cousin he would be disinherited. They do not agree very well together now." "It's all hers the old woman's in her own right?" "So far as I know." Gilly Jillingham lay back in his chair and mused for a while. "It's not a bad game if the cards play true."
"I have met the son," went on Lady Calverly. "Yes?" Phillipa's tone was one of absolute indifference. "He is a gentleman." "I have always heard of him as a solemn prig 'Old Steady' he was named at college. I confess I have no special leaning to these very proper and decorous youths." "Do not say that you are harping still on that old affair. I assure you Gilly Jillingham is unworthy of you.
Purling gave her favourites a liberal allowance, and promised them everything when she was gone, yet was she like a crustacean in the tenacity of her grip upon her own. This close-fistedness was exceedingly distasteful to Mr. Jillingham. He had an appetite for gold not easily appeased, and four or five thousand a year was to him but a mouthful to be swallowed at one gulp.
His evil genius, had he been present, might have hinted that sometimes the cards played for Mr. Jillingham a little too true. "Not a bad game. Phillipa, how do you stand with this old beldame?" "She pretends the most ardent affection for me." "There are no other relatives, no one she would take up if this son gave unpardonable offence?" "Not that I know of.
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