"The Colonel went on playing quietly. But whilst shuffling the cards for the following taille, he said in a low voice, without looking at the Chevalier, 'But you have a beautiful wife.'
"'What do you mean by that?' burst out the Chevalier angrily. The Colonel drew his cards without making any answer.
"'Ten thousand ducats or--Angela!' said the Colonel, half turning round whilst the cards were being cut.
"'You are mad!' exclaimed the Chevalier, who now began to observe on coming more to himself that the Colonel continually lost and lost again.
"'Twenty thousand ducats against Angela!' said the Colonel in a low voice, pausing for a moment in his shuffling of the cards.
"The Chevalier did not reply. The Colonel went on playing, and almost all the cards fell to the players' side.
"'Taken!' whispered the Chevalier in the Colonel's ear, as the new taille began, and he pushed the queen on the table.
"In the next draw the queen had lost. The Chevalier drew back from the table, grinding his teeth, and in despair stood leaning in a window, his face deathly pale.
"Play was over. 'Well, and what's to be done now?' were the Colonel's mocking words as he stepped up to the Chevalier.
"'Ah!' cried the Chevalier, quite beside himself, 'you have made me a beggar, but you must be insane to imagine that you could win my wife. Are we on the islands? is my wife a slave, exposed as a mere thing to the brutal arbitrariness of a reprobate man, that he may trade with her, gamble with her? But it is true! You would have had to pay twenty thousand ducats if the queen had won, and so I have lost all right to raise a protest if my wife is willing to leave me to follow you. Come along with me, and despair when you see how my wife will repel you with detestation when you propose to her that she shall follow you as your shameless mistress.'