‘Then you must teach me,’ rejoined she, laughing, ‘for I don’t know it. I’m wretchedly stupid about all these things, and never could learn any game but écarté.’
‘Then écarté be it,’ said I; and in a few minutes more I had arranged the little table, and down we sat to our party.
‘There,’ said she, laughing, and throwing her purse on the table, ‘I can only afford to lose so much; but you may win all that if you’re fortunate.’ A rouleau of louis escaped at the instant, and fell about the table.
‘Agreed,’ said I, indulging the quiz. ‘I am an inveterate gambler, and always play high. What shall be our stakes?’
‘Fifty, I suppose,’ said she, still laughing: ‘we can increase our bets afterwards.’
After some little badinage, we each placed a double louis-d’or on the board, and began. For a while the game employed our attention; but gradually we fell into conversation, the cards gradually dropped listlessly from our hands, the tricks remained unclaimed, and we could never decide whose turn it was to deal.
‘This wearies you, I see,’ said she; ‘perhaps you’d like to stop?’
‘By no means,’ said I. ‘I like the game, of all things.’ This I said rather because I was a considerable winner at the time than from any other motive; and so we played on till eleven o’clock, at which hour I usually took my leave, and by which time my gains had increased to some seventy louis.
‘Is it not fortunate,’ said she, laughing, ‘that eleven has struck? You ‘d certainly have won all my gold; and now you must leave off in the midst of your good fortune—and so, bonsoir, et à revanche.’
Each evening now saw our little party at écarté usurp the place of the drive and the opera; and though our successes ran occasionally high at either side, yet on the whole neither was a winner; and we jested about the impartiality with which fortune treated us both. At last, one evening, eleven struck when I was a greater winner than ever, and I thought I saw a little pique in her manner at the enormous run of luck I had experienced throughout.