"There's my last piastre for you," said Salvé, throwing it over to him.
"Try your luck with it."
"He is successful in love," said Paolina, tearfully, and with a naïve affectation of superstition—"he is engaged."
When her brother, who was balancing the piastre on his forefinger, laughingly translated what she had said, Salvé replied snappishly, with an impatient glance at the señorita—
"I am not engaged, and never shall be."
"Unsuccessful in love!" she broke out, gleefully; "and the last piastre!
To-morrow we shall win a hundred, two hundred, Federigo!"
It was clearly the conviction of her heart; and she seized a mandolin and began to dance to her own accompaniment, her eyes resting as she did so upon Salvé with a peculiar expression.
"Quick, Federigo!—why not this evening?" she cried, breaking off suddenly with a laugh, and throwing the mandolin from her on to the sofa. "To-morrow his luck may be gone."
She seized her brother's hat, crushed it down upon his head, and pushed him eagerly out of the door, going with him herself to open the wicket.
She came back then to Salvé, and as they sat tête-à-tête in the lamplit room with doors and windows thrown wide open, the moonlight gleaming on the dark trees outside, and the night air perfumed with the scent of flowers, she endeavoured to ingratiate herself with him by pouring out his rum-and-water and by rolling his cigarettes, an art in which it appeared from her laughter and gestures that she thought him awkward. She was in a state of feverish excitement, and kept darting off to the wicket and back again.
Salvé sat and smoked, and sipped his glass unconcernedly, whilst she rocked herself backwards and forwards in a rocking-chair, with her head thrown back, and her eyes steadily fixed upon him. He heard a sigh, and she said in a low, ingratiating tone—