Sophia felt suddenly serious and responsible.
‘No; never,’ she said with energy. ‘Promise me you will never go. I certainly shall not take you there; it is no place for you.’
‘Then, some day I shall go without you,’ remarked Leonard.
Sophia was so anxious that he should not—why, it perhaps would have puzzled her to say, except that she vaguely pictured his fresh young face looking singularly out of place in that gas-lit assembly—that she did her best to persuade him to promise that he would never set foot in the club, but unavailingly. The more she urged, the more Leonard’s desire to go increased.
‘And,’ as he remarked with candour, ‘I shan’t make a promise, because then I should feel obliged to keep it.’
So at last she desisted, feeling she would have been wiser not to have urged, and hoping that the boy would forget about it; for she would sooner he fought the Mayor’s son than cut his gambling teeth, and, indeed, the history of their quarrel had warmed her heart.
Two evenings afterwards she was sitting at her usual place on the right of Pierre, playing roulette. She was enjoying a rare run of luck, and her stakes were recklessly high. She had just placed the limit on a single number, when, looking up, she saw opposite her a young girl seated at the table watching the game with flushed and wide-eyed interest. She turned to Blanche Amesbury, who was sitting next her.
‘Look at that pretty child opposite,’ she said. ‘But what a way to dress a girl! She must be the daughter of that English brewer peer. What refined types you meet among the bourgeois! How its dear little heart is in the game! Yet it seems almost a shame to bring it here—this is no place for children—but the nouveaux riches are always horrible. Why—— Oh, good gracious me! it’s Leonard.’
Leonard caught the sound of his name, and looked up for a fraction of a second.
‘Oh, a moment—a moment!’ he cried. ‘Fourteen, fifteen—— Hurrah! sixteen wins. Good old sixteen! I wish I had staked on a single number instead of the half-dozen.’