“Aye, from Court she is,” said Lady Chillingburgh’s grandson, halting on the threshold to let his gaze roam thankfully over the great white-and-gold room, which had a sense of coolness and repose about it, even on such a night. “But she had her reasons for not hasting off with the rest of them this morning.”
“Eh—but they must be weighty reasons!” murmured the old servant, with a sigh.
“No doubt the lady thinks them so,” said Lionel Ratcliffe, with his detached laugh.—“We are full early here, ’twould seem,” he added in louder tones, advancing toward the card-table in the window before which the Frenchwoman had already taken seat.
But she disdained to cast toward him even the flutter of an eyelid. Her fingers were moving restlessly among the cards and dice.
“Zero … zero! Hein? Non-zero. Ah … mal-chance!”
The man stood over her a second or two in silence. Then sat down in his turn and faced her. His voice rang out with a kind of empty cheeriness:—
“What! to the dice already?—Nay,” here he leaned across the narrow space and whispered, “Remember, it was to play another game that I brought you here.”
She turned petulantly from him; then her eye became fixed, staring out through the unshuttered window.
“What a strange red moon is rising!” she cried. “Would to God, Monsieur Ratcliffe, you had never come to me this morning, tempting, tempting.… My boxes were packed: I should be now far from this pit of pestil—”