“Come, let us go,” said the baron, when it was over. “Let us keep that voice fresh in our ears. It is a pity he is so uncouth,” he added, as he laid the countess’s wrap about her shoulders. “It must annoy him very much. Now let us look for that scapegrace of mine.”
They descended together to the atrium, but the prince was not among the people loitering there. The public gaming rooms beyond were jammed with the usual sordid crowd—shabby old men and women to whom the tables were the breath of life, who spent week after week, month after month, watching the wheel and recording every play, in the hope of discovering a system; cheap adventurers, striving to pick up a few francs; half-starved shop-girls, risking their last little notes with trembling hands; harpies of the underworld, trying to attach themselves to any man who seemed to be winning; all the ugly, tattered, repulsive fringes of society....
“He would not be here,” said the baron, and hastened through the tainted atmosphere to the private rooms beyond.
But neither was the prince there, and after a vain look around, the baron had a word with the chief inspector.
“M. le Prince was here,” said the inspector, “but only for a moment. He met some one he knew—a young man, a newcomer, an American apparently, not yet known to the attendants. They went away together—perhaps to the Sporting Club.”
“Thank you; we shall see,” said the baron.
As he turned away, the countess, who had listened to all this with the utmost indifference, suppressed a slight yawn.
“If you will see me to my hotel,” she suggested.
The baron came back with a start to the obligations of the moment.
“You see how it is!” he protested. “I am no longer myself. These affairs grow too much for me—it is a sign that I am getting old. You will forgive me, will you not?”