‘Perhaps to conceal some deformity, poor gentleman!’ said Pierre, ‘or perhaps he has the dance of St. Vitus. Your Royal Highness will find he plays well.’
‘Ask him to come in, then,’ she said, ‘and ask three others; we are short to-night.’
Pierre hurried into the other room to do her bidding, and a moment afterwards returned with the desired number. It was considered a sort of brevet rank among card-players to join the Princess’s table, and her requests were always eagerly obeyed. Last of the four came the Black Domino, and as the Princess bowed to him, ‘Your Royal Highness will be so kind as to excuse my domino,’ he said; ‘it is a practice of mine to wear it.’
‘And gloves?’ asked the Princess, with interest.
‘No, madam; I have my hands under control,’ he replied.
‘That is odd,’ said she. ‘My face I have under control, you shall see, but occasionally I have to wear gloves.’
Princess Aline was not gifted by nature with the best of temper, and for the first hour she had certainly the worst of luck. Eight times she betted limit stakes on the second half-dozen—no mean form of play—and seven times she lost. The limit was one hundred napoleons, and the seven rolls were expensive. At the end of the seventh she lost her temper as well as her stake, and in a spasm of irony quite ineffectual against inanimate objects she laid two sous with much asperity on the same half-dozen, although the lowest stake was understood to be a napoleon; but her bet was addressed, not to the company, but to the offending marble. This time, of course, she won, and in a fit of rage she hurled the innocuous penny-piece which Pierre had hastily fished out of his pocket on to the floor.
The Black Domino, who was seated next her, pushed back his chair, and picked it up for her.
‘I think this slipped from the hand of your Serene Highness,’ he said gravely, and with such suavity and seriousness of tone that none thought to laugh.
The Princess meantime, as she so often was accustomed to do when beginning a night’s play, trifled and coquetted with Luck, to see in what mood the goddess was, as some gourmet who is ordering his dinner will sit over the choice of dishes with an olive or a glass of bitters, testing the quality and leanings of his appetite. She bet a napoleon or two on a single number once or twice, and lost; she bet on a few half-dozens, and lost also; she even bet occasionally on the colour, but Luck seemed to have turned its back on her. These insignificant triflings gave her time to observe the Black Domino, and before long her candour told her that Luck had been right to leave her. If she was, as Pierre said, the Queen of Monte Carlo, here indeed was the King. The domino, of course, concealed his face; but, even as Pierre had said, his hands might have been of ice. He seemed to stake nothing lower than the limit, and he never staked on more than a half-dozen. Once, when he had bet on a single number, she noticed he had just lit a match for his cigarette, and his hand was half raised, the elbow off the table, when the marble, as sometimes happens, after some few wild dashes backwards and forwards, began to slow down very suddenly. Watching it, he forgot to light his cigarette, and though his arm was unsupported, she saw his white fingers cut like a cameo across his black coat, and the edge never wavered. She grew so interested in watching him that more than once she forgot to stake on a roll, to the extreme amazement of all present, including herself.