‘Do you think his travels may not have cured him?’ asked Lady Blanche.
‘How can one cure a passion? It is incurable. You may repress it, but it is always there. True, I hope it is so much repressed that it will not break out. Perhaps you may even call it cured. But what self-respecting young man would banish himself to Rhodopé, especially one who has the instinct for play, if there was no club?’
‘When will he be back?’ asked Blanche.
‘I don’t know. I have not heard from him for weeks. He was to shoot bears, I think he said. It seems hardly worth while to go to America to do that. Look how magnificent the view is! It was worth our while to come.’
They got back about five o’clock, and after tea drove down to the Casino. The rooms were very empty, and a restless, unsettled atmosphere was abroad. Over the sea from time to time came blinks of remote lightning, and rumblings of thunder, like the sound of a gong very far away. Even roulette somehow seemed monotonous, in such poor spirits were the Princess’s guests, and it was a relief to her when dinner-time came, for there was no such tonic to the mind as dinner.
As they dined, the storm moved nearer, and while they drank their coffee on the terrace, they watched a continuous play of violet-coloured lightning southwards over the sea, and the noise of the thunder began to overscore the hoarse voice of the swell on the beach below. A few drops of rain, warm and large, splashed down on the terrace like sudden frogs, and the tension of the atmosphere grew unbearable. Even Sophia felt it.
‘Something is going to happen,’ she cried, as they entered the Casino doors—‘something is going to happen fit for the lightning to look at and the thunder to listen to. I am excited! I am delightfully excited!’
CHAPTER XIV.
BANG!
The world seemed to have stopped at home that night, and in the large room—a thing Sophia had never known before—there was no one playing. The croupiers were all at their posts, some of them idly spinning the wheels, or dealing right and left for imaginary trente et quarante; but the visitors, perhaps only twenty in all, were lounging by the open windows, silently watching the gathering of the storm. Due south, and far over the sea, a terrific thunderstorm was going on; to the west, a separate and distinct display winked and grumbled. Both storms were certainly moving nearer; it was as if the elements were banded together for the destruction of Monte Carlo, and the whole world seemed to be waiting, finger on lip, for an imminent judgment. The air was windless, but every few minutes a sudden gust swept rattling and hissing across the garden, some outlying feeler, cast down like a grappling-iron from a balloon, of the fearful tumult that was raging fathoms overhead. In such a way seaweed and ooze feel the suck of a swell above, stir and wave madly through the translucent water, and are still again.
Close to the window near where they entered the large room a very tall figure of a man lounged against the wall, his face averted. Over it—no uncommon sight—was tied a black domino, for the more finished gamblers of that day—gamblers, that is, of the first water, who cultivated style—often concealed their faces in this way, for fear that some ungovernable seizure of the muscles might declare their emotion. Princess Sophia had often talked this curious custom over with Blanche.