I had actually and incontestably (even inconceivably!) broken the bank! I was, for the moment, dumfounded. How they crowded around us, the aristocrats, the half-world, the confirmed gamblers, the sightseers and the hangers-on! From afar I could hear the music of the band. They were playing a polonaise of Chopin's. I was like one in a dream.
"They are asking you where to send the gold," she said.
"The gold? Oh, yes! to the hotel, to the hotel!"—finding my senses.
An attendant put our winnings into a basket, and, in company with two guardians of the peace, or gendarmes, if you will call them so, preceded us to the hotel.
"To your brother's room?" I asked.
"At once! I feel as if I were about to faint. Mr. Chadwick, my name is Carruthers. Will you go to my brother's room with me and explain all this to him?"
I nodded, and was about to follow her with the attendant who still carried our gold, when a voice struck my ear,—a voice which filled me with surprise, chagrin and terror.
"So, I have found you!"
A handsome woman of thirty-five stood at my side. Anger and wrath lay visibly written on her face and in her eyes. My sister! She did not appear to notice the young girl beside me, who instinctively shrank from me at the sound of my sister's voice.