Caught in a Trap

“Hullo! Markworth. How lucky! Why you are just the man I want; you’re ubiquitous, who’d have thought of seeing you in town?” said Tom Hartshorne, of the —th Dragoons, cheerily, as he sauntered late one summer afternoon into a private billiard-room in Oxford-street, where a tall, dark-complexioned, and strikingly-handsome man, was knocking the balls about in his shirt-sleeves, and trying all sorts of fancy shots against the cushions—The sole occupant of the room was he, with the exception of the marker, who was looking on in a desultory sort of way at the strokes of the player from his thronelike chair underneath the scoring board.