They came into a very noble room, the largest of all, with enormous mirrors down to the ground, and a ceiling blazing with gold, and the air glittering with lusters. Two very large tables, and a distinguished company at each, especially at the trente et quarante.
Before our little party had taken six steps into the room, Zoe stood like a pointer; and Fanny backed.
Should these terms seem disrespectful, let Fanny bear the blame. It is her application of the word “chasse” that drew down the simile.
Yes, there sat Ned Severne, talking familiarly to Joseph Ashmead, and preparing to “put the pot on,” as he called it.
Now Zoe was so far gone that the very sight of Severne was a balsam to her. She had a little bone to pick with him; and when he was out of sight, the bone seemed pretty large. But when she saw his adorable face, unconscious, as it seemed, of wrong, the bone faded and the face shone.
Her own face cleared at the sight of him: she turned back to Fanny and Vizard, arch and smiling, and put her finger to her mouth, as much as to say, “Let us have some fun. We have caught our truant: let us watch him, unseen, a little, before we burst on him.”
Vizard enjoyed this, and encouraged her with a nod.
The consequence was that Zoe dropped Miss Maitland's arm, who took that opportunity to turn up her nose, and began to creep up like a young cat after a bird; taking a step, and then pausing; then another step, and a long pause; and still with her eye fixed on Severne. He did not see her, nor her companions, partly because they were not in front of him, but approaching at a sharp angle, and also because he was just then beginning to bet heavily on his system. By this means, two progressive events went on contemporaneously: the arch but cat-like advance of Zoe, with pauses, and the betting of Severne, in which he gave himself the benefit of his system.
Noir having been the last to win, he went against the alternation and put fifty pounds on noir. Red won. Then, true to his system, he doubled on the winning color. One hundred pounds on red. Black won. He doubled on black, and red won; and there were four hundred pounds of his five hundred gone in five minutes.
On this proof that the likeliest thing to happen—viz., alternation of the color—does sometime happen, Severne lost heart.