Mrs. McMahon gathered up the gold and crisp notes of the Bank of France and placed them in her chain purse.
"My dear," she replied, "I am almost as keen as you are to go on, but let us be content with our great good fortune. We shall have all the more money to play with when we begin upon the system to-morrow."
They vacated their seats, which were immediately occupied by people who had been standing behind them, and moved slowly through the great hall towards the doors. By this time the rooms were thronged with people of all nationalities.
The wealthiest millionaires of London, Paris and Vienna rubbed shoulders with well-dressed scoundrels known to the police of all three capitals. There was a reigning king present—a tall, elderly man with a long white beard—half the nobilities of Europe were represented. The most expensive and extravagant toilets to be found anywhere in the world at that hour were seen on either side, and yet there was a proportion of the players as poor in worldly goods as Ethel McMahon and her mother themselves; retired army men in whom the gambling fever burned and would burn until their death, young spendthrifts who had come to spend their all upon a last chance, financial defaulters who hoped by one smile of the goddess Fortune to restore money which was not theirs, and to yet preserve their honour in the eyes of the world.
And through this motley and brilliant crowd—the strangest crowd in Europe, in the strangest place—Ethel and her mother moved as if in a dream.
In the mind of the old lady a fierce and feverish greed flared like a naphtha lamp. In the mind of the girl there was but one thought, crystallised into a name—Basil! Basil! Basil!
They were near the end of the last salon and coming up to the long swing doors when Ethel started violently and half stopped.
Standing at one of the tables, within two or three yards of her, was a tall, well-built man in evening dress. His back was towards her, and there was something so absolutely familiar in the shoulders, the poise of the stranger, that she gasped.
For a moment she thought she saw Basil Gregory again—dear Basil, who was far away at the electric light works in Paris.
Then the stranger made a half turn. He was clean shaved, his complexion was swarthy, his hair was black. He was dressed also in the height of the French fashion.