Gerard hesitated. He had in his mind the notion that Cecil Jones, simple as he looked and sillily as he spoke, was not quite the innocent jay he appeared. But yet he did not want to betray a suspicion of these new friends of Rachel Davison’s until he was quite sure about them.
“Did he lose much?” asked Gerard, instead of replying to his friend’s question.
“I don’t quite know. I saw a good deal of gold flying about, and he said, with that sheepish smile of his, that he’d been cleaned out. I wonder Miss Davison cares to stay with people who play cards all day on Sunday!”
“Well, it surprised me to see her playing, too,” admitted Gerard.
“Yes. I shan’t say anything about that at home. Mother would be awfully disgusted. And I can’t say I quite like it myself; and I know I don’t like losing so much as I did.”
“Why did you go on playing, then?”
“Oh, you know one can’t help oneself. These people are rich, and they don’t consider that other pockets are not all as deep as their own.”
“Are they really so rich?”
“Oh, yes. Of course I know everybody in America is called a millionaire if he has a little money put by. But the father, old Van Santen, really is a very rich man, as I happen to know, and a man with a decent character, as rich men’s characters go out there. He’s expected over here every day, and I fancy he’ll be rather surprised, if all I hear about his rather straight-laced views is correct, at the way in which his quiet family has transformed itself into a remarkably lively one. Denver says they’ve all been kept in with too tight a hand, and that now they have to make up for it.”
“I don’t quite understand that fellow,” said Gerard. “He’s not consistent. I heard him telling Sir William that he sometimes lost at poker to beginners at the game. But then, later, he was boasting that he could beat any poker-player in England.”