A very tall and handsome young man had risen from his chair. His face was a little flushed and his eyes sparkled, while he tried in vain to conceal the smile of pleasure and excitement upon his lips. Several of the other people at this table, who all appeared to know him, rose also and began to congratulate him in low voices.
"That is the Archduke Theodore," the major said in a husky whisper. "He is a cousin of the Tsar. For the last week he has been winning enormous sums, and apparently he has done so again to-night. His pockets are simply bulging with notes!"
Mrs. McMahon looked significantly at Ethel. Then she saw her chance. "Come," she said, "we can sit down at this table. This is a very fortunate chance." They went to the table and found two chairs unoccupied, slipping into them quickly in the momentary diversion created by the Archduke's success, and for the first time Ethel McMahon sat actually a guest of the unknown goddess of Fortune, and about to woo her.
To the girl's unaccustomed eyes the scene was bewilderingly strange. The long expanse of green baize cloth stretched away on either side of her. It was marked with numbered squares and triangles, while at one end were two huge diamonds of red and black in either corner. She faced a row of people, men and women in correct evening costume, save that the women, like herself, wore the large hats which are de rigueur in the Casino. Jewels gleamed bewilderingly almost everywhere. Exactly opposite her was a woman who was simply plastered with diamonds, and yet next this gorgeous vision with the painted face and laughing eyes, with a king's ransom round her throat and in her hair, sat an elderly yellow-faced woman in a black dress and without a single ornament—more quietly and even shabbily dressed than Mrs. McMahon herself. There were two fresh-faced English boys, who looked like soldiers, there was an enormous black-bearded Bulgarian, with eyes like black velvet and hands like fat claws.
And all these people, on the green baize before them, had wads of notes or piles of gold, save only the old lady, before whom were only a few five-franc pieces—the minimum stake allowed at Monte Carlo.
And on the numbers themselves money was already beginning to be placed from every part of the table. Sometimes the people pushed it themselves on the chosen numbers, sometimes, when they were too far away, they gave it to one of the silent croupiers who sat round among the people and pushed the coins to the destined spot with their long india-rubber-tipped rakes.
Dividing the long table in the centre was the wheel itself, and the croupier in charge of it was already fingering the ivory ball. Behind him, on a higher seat, sat the official in charge of all the others engaged at this table, and from his lips came the occasional croak of the famous "Faites vos jeux, messieurs: faites vos jeux."
Ethel had three golden louis in her purse. It was all the money that they had brought with them.
Her mother had told her that beginners nearly always won the first time they played—a very common superstition among gamblers, and one which, for some reason or other, seems to be amply justified.
"What shall I do, mother?"