"If your side beats you will draw cuts for the prize," Grey said to Jack; "and if my side beats there is no cut about it, it is mine."
And so the game began, Neil bending every energy to win, and feeling almost as much excited and eager as if it were a fortune at stake, instead of the bit of Scotch ribbon he had affected to dislike. And it did almost seem to him as if he were playing for Bessie herself; playing to keep her from Grey, the very man to whom he had said he would rather give her than to any one else in the world, if she were not for him. The first game was Grey's, the second Neil's; then came the rubber, and Bessie dealt.
"Oh, Bessie," Neil said, in a despairing voice, when he found that he did not hold a single trump, while Jack gave out the second time round, and Grey turned up five points, making six in all.
Suddenly the tide turned and Neil's was the winning side until they stood six and four, and then Grey roused himself and played as he had never done before, carefully watching the cards as they fell, knowing exactly what had been played, and calculating pretty accurately where the others were, and finally coming off victorious.
"The ribbon is mine, and I claim my own!" Grey said, with a ring in his voice and a warmth in his manner which brought the hot blood to Bessie's cheeks, as she took the knot from her throat and presented it to him, blushing still more when he raised it to his lips and then pinned it upon his sleeve.
"What a cad he is! I'd like to knock him down, if he were any one but Grey," Neil thought, and pushing back his chair from the table he said he had had enough of cards for one night. Whist was a stupid game anyway, and he never had any luck.
Neil was very quiet the remainder of the evening, though he could not altogether resist Grey, who was at his best, and kept them all in a roar of laughter at his jokes and the stories he told of the genuine Yankees whom he had seen in New England, and the Johnny Bulls he had encountered in England, and whose peculiarities of voice and expression he imitated perfectly. Then he recited poetry, comic and tragic and descriptive; and was so entertaining and brilliant, and so very courteous and gentlemanly in all he did and said, that Bessie was enraptured and showed it in her speaking face, which Neil knew always told the truth, and when at last he retired to his room he could not sleep, but lay awake, torn with jealousy and love and doubt as to what he ought to do.