He smiled his old cynical, treacherous smile.
"Monsieur is pleased to be very pronounced in his language. A gambler! Monsieur no doubt means to say that madame has not the appearance of being under the intoxication of the play." Then with a positive tone, still flicking the pebbles, "The baroness played for love."
"Of the cards?" I asked persistently. I was determined to drive the nail to the head.
The croupier looked at me fixedly, shrugged his shoulders, laughed between his teeth, a little, hissing laugh that sounded like escaping steam, and said slowly:—
"No; of a man."
Then, noticing my increasing interest, "Monsieur would know something of madame?"
He held up his hand, and began crooking one finger after another as he recounted her history. These bent keys, it seemed, unlocked secrets as well.
"Le voilà! the drama of Madame la Baronne! The play opens when she is first a novice in the convent of Saint Ursula, devoted to good works and the church. Next you find her a grand dame and rich, the wife of Baron Alphonse de Frontignac, first secretary of legation at Vienna. Then a mother with one child,—a boy, now six or seven years old, who is hardly ever out of her arms." He stopped, toyed for a moment with his match-safe, slipped it into his pocket, and said carelessly, "So much for Act I."
Then, after a pause during which he traced again little diagrams in the gravel, he said suddenly:—
"Does this really interest you, monsieur?"