The shouting, and the noise, and the laughter kept increasing. There were already drunken faces at the table, and in several directions quarrelling and the sound of blows were beginning to be heard. Federigo, who seemed to be known to many in the rooms, had mixed with the crowd, and Salvé's neighbours on either side were now playing eagerly with dice, diving from time to time for small silver pieces into heavy leathern purses, that seemed to have been destined for sums very different from what their present meagre contents represented. So many debased, avaricious countenances as he saw around him he had never imagined that it would be possible to collect in one spot, and he made up his mind to have no more to do with them than he could possibly help. He might congratulate himself, he thought, if he escaped from them with a whole skin, and he felt in his breast-pocket to see that his knife was there.
One of the North Americans who had nodded to him, in virtue of his sailor's dress, when he entered, came over to him now and asked him to come and sit with them; but as he rather felt himself under Federigo's charge, he declined just then. Shortly after, to his surprise, he saw the señorita standing at the gaming-table, with her head, which was all he could see, beautifully dressed; and he observed that the eyes of the keeper of the tavern—a tall, lean Portuguese, with a long, sallow face, and hardly any hair on his head, who himself presided at the table—were turned towards her continually with a look of humble, tender concern. She was playing excitedly, and losing every time. At last she stopped, in evident irritation, and beckoned him to one side, with a certain authority, in spite of his having the table to attend to.
They spoke eagerly together, and Salvé caught a rapid glance directed towards himself by the señorita, which he did not at all like. She was unnaturally pale; and he saw that she finally gave the other her hand, which he kissed with an enraptured expression, and she then disappeared from the room.
The landlord's face beamed the whole evening afterwards, and he bowed politely to Federigo as he passed the table. The latter, the next time he came near Salvé, whispered rather scornfully—
"I believe my sister has bartered away her soul this evening, and promised to marry that old money-bag there who keeps the tavern. Congratulate us, amigo mio!"
Salvé observed that the said money-bag conferred now more than once with the man at the head of his own table, and was apparently making terms with him; and that the latter also, when he thought he was not observed, glanced over at himself in a way that was very far from putting him at his ease.
The American who had spoken to him before—a tall, athletic-looking man, with a fair beard round a hard Yankee face, and with a remnant of gold lace on the sleeve of his jacket—had since been at the gaming-table, and had been losing one doubloon after another.
"They don't play fair, my lad!" he cried in English to Salvé, to whom he seemed anxious to make up.
"I daresay not," was the reply; "it's a vile den."
"What country do you hail from?"