‘I’ve lost seventy thousand!’ muttered the young man, with a shudder like one who felt cold all over.
‘Seventy!—not to-night, surely?’
‘Yes, to-night,’ replied he. ‘I won fourteen hundred naps here when I came first, and didn’t play for three weeks afterwards; but unfortunately I strolled in here a few nights ago, and lost the whole back, as well as some hundreds besides; but this evening I came bent on winning back—that was all I desired—winning back my own.’
As he said these words, I saw Sir Harry steal a glance at Crotty. The thing was as quick as lightning, but never did a glance reveal more; he caught my eye upon him, and looking round fully at me said, in a deep, ominous voice—
‘That’s the confounded part of it; it’s so hard to stop when you ‘re losing.’
‘Hard!—impossible!’ cried the youth, whose eyes were now riveted on the table, following every card that fell from the banker’s hands, and flushing and growing pale with every alternation of the game. ‘See now, for all you’ve said, look if the red has not won four times in succession?’
‘So it has,’ replied the baronet coolly; ‘but the previous run on black would have left your purse rather shallow, or you must have a devilish deep one, that’s all.’
He took up a pencil as he spoke, and began to calculate on the back of the card; then holding it over, he said, ‘There’s what you ‘d have lost if you went on betting.’
‘What!—two hundred and eighty thousand francs?’
‘Exactly! Look here’; and he went over the figures carefully before him.