"What! You have been busy with your schemes, Dasso; you have not noticed the eyes of the Queen, perhaps. Win!"—and the lieutenant snapped his fingers—"impossible."
Gabriel Dasso leant over the table and he spoke in a low whisper. Perhaps it was the wine that caused the huskiness to come into his voice.
"I saw eyes, Gaspar, like those fifteen years ago—and I won then. What is to prevent our doing now what we did then?"
He remained silent for a moment, his eyes never leaving Mozara's face.
"——now, what we did then," he repeated; "the people know nothing of this girl, and before the story can leak out it will be all over. I can get the captains from the barracks, Luaz and Pinto, and—oh, they'll all come with me. The girl shall not be mentioned; they will think there is only Armand there, and you know what they think of him. But it must be now; I will not count on their help when once they have seen her. I myself will find the girl and deal with her as I dealt with her moth——"
With an oath the lieutenant started forward; the glass he had been holding crashed to the floor, and his breath came in little painful gasps.
"You devil—you—Oh, I knew the downward path was broad, I did not think it was so short. Only a few months since that evil day when I fell under your thumb. Before the night of the cards I had been no worse than the others, now—— What's that, Dasso?"
The lieutenant had broken off suddenly and stood in the attitude of listening, his face grey and set. For a moment there was a strained silence in the room, then there came to the ears of the men a confused distant murmur. Dasso reached out a hand and extinguished the lamp.
Cautiously the two men, brought together now by a common danger, moved to the window; the flicker of the logs in the grate lit up the fear on their faces. Gabriel drew the blind aside for about an inch and stood waiting.
All seemed quiet again now, and the men told themselves that they had heard some drunken roysterers on their way home from the Casino. After a few moments they returned to the fire. There was a sneer on Dasso's face as he turned to the younger man and took up the quarrel where it had been interrupted.