The Wings flattered her, and
professed to adore her. Her absent whimsical character prevented her
from understanding what kind of people they were; and in her great
ignorance of the world, combined with her love of the romantic and the
extreme, she took the persons who haunted their house for Bohemians,
when she should have known them--the majority of them--for scoundrels.
You will remember that baccarat was then the rage. The Wings played it
incessantly, and were very skilful in the decoying and plunder of young
men. Juliet Sparling was soon seized by the excitement of the game, and
her beauty, her evident good breeding and good faith, were of
considerable use to the Wings' _menage_. Very soon she had lost all the
money that her husband had left to her credit, and her bankers wrote to
notify her that she was overdrawn. A sudden terror of Sparling's
displeasure seized her; she sold a bracelet, and tried to win back what
she had lost. The result was only fresh loss, and in a panic she played
on and on, till one disastrous night she got up from the baccarat-table
heavily in debt to one or two persons, including Sir Francis Wing. With
the morning came a letter from her husband, remonstrating in a rather
sharp tone on what her own letters--and probably an account from some
other source--had told him of her life at Brighton; insisting on the
need for economy, owing to his own heavy expenses in the great
excavation he was engaged upon; and expressing the peremptory hope that
she would make the money he had left her last for another two months--"
Sir James lingered in his walk.
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