Something of this feeling Mrs. Winter had gathered from Hannaford, though he had never put it in words, and Dick knew she would be glad of to-night's news. It was no secret that Madame Berenger had refused to accept less than three hundred thousand francs; therefore Dick sprang to the conclusion that this must be the sum of Hannaford's winnings.
"I congratulate you heartily," he said. "My cousin will be delighted. She likes you, and has been interested about the Château Lontana."
"She's been very kind and sympathetic. No wonder everybody loves her! I know what she'll want to say now, even if she doesn't say it. 'Pay for your château, and play no more.' Well, if you see her sooner than I do, please tell Mrs. Winter I'm going to take her advice before I get it—to a certain extent. Not a louis do I risk till the place is mine. Then—perhaps I'll follow my luck, and try to make the Casino help me restore the house and garden. Not that I want to do much, only enough to make the place habitable, and give the flowers a chance to breathe."
"Then you mean to live there?"
"For a while at all events. Perhaps not long. Who knows what one may do? But I shall have the pleasure of knowing it's mine."
Dick, though interested, had fallen into absent-mindedness. Two or three persons having slipped away, he was able to get nearer the table, and to see more clearly what Mary was doing. It almost seemed that if he and Hannaford concentrated their whole minds upon willing her to stop play for the night, she must feel the influence. Her luck was out, certainly. She had lost a great deal, but she had a goodly store of winnings to fall back upon.
"Let's will her hard, to leave off," he suggested, half ashamed of the proposal, yet secretly in earnest.
Hannaford smiled indulgence. "All right," he said. "Here goes!"
Vanno Della Robbia less deliberately yet with more ardour had thrown himself into the same experiment. He thought that Mary's anger against him might have one good result: in making her wish to leave the table where he had come to sit. She could scarcely fall upon worse luck elsewhere, and perhaps she might give up play for the evening if she went away from this unlucky corner. If a wish of his could be granted by fate, she would never play again. Yet, desiring this with all the force that was in him, he began nevertheless to gamble, for the first time since coming to Monte Carlo. No conscientious scruple had held him back hitherto; but the game had not appealed to him. He disliked the crowding, the sordidness and vulgarity which, to his mind, attended it; and it seemed to him that public gambling was an unintelligent, greedy vice.
His idea in putting on money now was merely to "pay for his place," whence he did not mean to move as long as Mary stayed. Many other men would be ready to snatch the chair the instant he abandoned it, therefore he had no right to usurp the Casino's property without payment. He had no small money with him, and to avoid the trouble of changing notes with a croupier, he staked a hundred francs on red, the colour of the number which Lord Dauntrey had just advised Mary to choose.