The gambler darkened, gathering the pasteboards.
“We can’t both win, gentlemen,” he said, tone passionless. “But I am willing to give you one more chance, from a new deck.”
What the response was I did not know, nor care. My ears drummed confusedly, and seeing nothing I pushed through into the open, painfully conscious that I was flat penniless and that instead of having 127 played the knave I had played the fool, for the queen of hearts.
The loss of some twenty dollars might have been a trivial matter to me once—I had at times cast that sum away as vainly as Washington had cast a dollar across the Potomac; but here I had lost my all, whether large or small; and not only had I been bilked out of it—I had bilked myself out of it by sinking, in pretended smartness, below the level of a more artful dodger.
I heard My Lady speaking beside me.
“I’m so sorry.” She laid hand upon my sleeve. “You should have been content with small sums, or followed my lead. Next time——”
“There’ll be no next time,” I blurted. “I am cleaned out.”
“You don’t mean——?”
“I was first robbed at the hotel. Now here.”
“No, no!” she opposed. Jim sidled to us. “That was a bungle, Jim.”