“He is a professional gambler.”
“A what?” she exclaimed, flinging up her head.
“A gambler,—a man whose business it is to fleece any person he meets who is silly enough to engage in games of chance with him, and”—meaningly—“he likes to play for high stakes.”
Nina restlessly moved one of her wet feet about the moist deck. And this was the sort of man she had allowed to talk to her,—to be friendly with her.
“A short time ago,” her husband went on, “he got into trouble on a French steamer because one of his victims shot himself.”
“Why did you not tell me this before?” murmured the girl, resentfully.
“Suppose I wanted you to learn a lesson.”
“You didn’t want me to learn a lesson,” she said, vehemently. “I don’t believe you knew, for sure, what he was like till just now: that sort of thing is not permitted. The captain of a ship—”
“Has no right whatever to control the amusements of his passengers unless they interfere with the exercise of his duties. I really wished to give you a lesson, though I did not know surely how bad he was till yesterday. The longer I live, the more I wonder over the guilelessness of women—good women—in making acquaintances.”
“I hate suspicious people,” retorted Nina.