"Hawkins was made an earl," said Charles, speaking of some London acquaintance.
"What for?" asked the Senator.
"Successful adulteration," said the poet tartly.
"Honours are easy," the magazine editor put in.
"And two by tricks to Sir Charles," the poet added.
Towards the close of the evening, however—the poet still remaining moody, not to say positively grumpy—Senator Wrengold proposed a friendly game of Swedish poker. It was the latest fashionable variant in Western society on the old gambling round, and few of us knew it, save the omniscient poet and the magazine editor. It turned out afterwards that Wrengold proposed that particular game because he had heard Coleyard observe at the Lotus Club the same afternoon that it was a favourite amusement of his. Now, however, for a while he
