"Quite true. If you had observed a little more closely, you would have seen something else. Now, I ask you, the few times we have played baccarat together, did you ever see me fail to stake?"
"Not to my knowledge."
"Quite so. If you had looked at the table a moment before, you would have seen I had nothing staked. What happened was this: I had staked four ten-pound counters and two fives; then, seeing that I had no more smaller ones, I withdrew them to substitute one fifty for them. At that moment I received my cards, and, taking them up I forgot for the moment to substitute my fifty. I looked at the cards, declared the natural, and you saw me push forward the fifty-pound counter quite openly, and, so you thought, clumsily. It never occurred to me for a moment there was any need of an explanation."
Kit's anger and alarm was growing on her.
"Very clumsily," she said; "we all saw it."
"It was stupid of me, no doubt, not to have explained at the time," he said, "but really I had no idea the company was so suspicious."
He paused for a moment, and his mild temper was roused at the thought of Kit's behaviour.
"But perhaps people are right to be suspicious," he added, with a raised intonation.
The shot went home, and Kit's face grew a shade paler. But she could not conceivably show that she knew what he meant, for that would be to accuse herself. Instead, she put all the insolence her voice would hold into her reply.
"And what proof have I of the truth of what you say?" she asked, fighting desperately on this battle-ground of her adversary's choosing.