Now she staked more and more wildly, confident in her luck, and always won. Her cheeks burnt, her pulses leapt; people looked at her with envy, hatred and malice. A gold louis rolling towards her hopped off the table, unobserved by her; a liveried attendant came behind unseen, with a lighted lantern at the end of a stick, and pushed it amongst people's feet and under the table, while a man with a vacuous face, staring aimlessly about the hall, set his foot quite casually on the coin, not seeming to observe the attendant looking for it with the lantern, and then, without appearing to make any movement, lounged carelessly on with the same vacuous look, but leaving no corn where his foot had been.
Two hundred francs in notes had jumped into Ermengarde's bag, which was stuffed to bursting with gold and silver besides. The coat and skirt was hers many times over. It would be mean to stop now; besides, it was impossible to turn from the magic of that flowing tide of gold and silver; the feeling of possession and power, and the enchantment of successfully daring that wild blind demon of chance, was too strong. People had made fortunes in a night; why not she? She placed a little pile of gold à travers; the wheel stopped, and the croupier pushed her pile to the bank. She bit her lip, frowned, staked again, and lost again. Cowardly to draw back now; who was going to give in? Another golden stake, and her pile came back doubled. Of course; fortune always favours the brave.
But at the end of another half-hour the croupier had been changed; many players had come and gone from the outer ranks of that table, the inner circle remaining unbroken, except that Cyrano had vanished unnoticed by Ermengarde, who saw nothing but the whirling wheel, the dancing ball, and the flying mazes of the great five-franc pieces and louis d'or over the green table. Nothing now remained in her bag but a few odd coins raked from every recess, and together making five francs, for which an obliging neighbour gave her a broad silver piece.
Her luck at that table was clearly gone; she left it, selected another, and, after a short calculation and some watching of the play, set her teeth, and placed her five-franc piece with a shaking hand on a carefully chosen square. The little demon of a ball clicked into place; the ruthless rake pushed her stake to the bank.
The game was up; Mrs. Allonby found herself three minutes later standing on the Casino steps in the pure air, feverish and faint from the reaction and the fetid atmosphere of the gambling-room, vainly trying to remember where Mr. Welbourne had promised to wait for her, and minus not only the usual contents of her purse, but also minus the note that was to have paid a week's bill at Madame Bontemps's little office before starting that afternoon, and a couple of hundred franc notes, tucked into a pocket of the bag besides. In view of attractive apparel and bric-à-brac sure to be found in the sumptuous shops, those hundred franc notes were, indeed, sadly insufficient; but without them what was to be done?
Clearly the only thing now was to get a cup of tea at the café immediately opposite, where people were sitting in the sunshine and a band was playing delightfully. Surely Mr. Welbourne had said Café de Paris, or was it Giro's? No; he could never have walked so far as to Giro's. It was important to find him, else there could be no tea. She was too tired to look for him, too tired to do anything but sit down very wearily; however, she set out to find him, knowing he could not be far away.
But the spare, slim figure with the slight halt and the grizzled hair was nowhere to be found, either in the moving crowd or among the groups at the little tables; she had not even the price of a twopenny chair, much less of a cup of tea, and where was all that fine moral indignation of the early afternoon?
The band played triumphantly to a climax, and ended on a grand crash of all instruments; the sun, hidden under a floating cloud, shone gloriously out again, and there, in the blaze among the promenaders, showed conspicuously the graceful figure of M. Isidore, gay as ever, faultlessly dressed, wearing his hat with the little rakish tilt of gilded French youth, and talking with easy and familiar vivacity to a youngish woman, arrayed in the last and most refined Parisian style, and with that unmistakable air of being in the higher social world that is the exclusive property of no nation. The handsome couple stopped, exchanged a few final words, and parted, M. Isidore turning with lifted hat to shoot a last Parthian arrow of wit that sent the lady off, after a gesture of reproval, with heaving shoulders and eyes brimming with laughter. It was then that M. Isidore perceived Mrs. Allonby, and came smiling with raised hat towards her, with "Ah, Madame, you too? Have you also tried your luck at the tables?" and would have gone by, but that she cried joyously, "What a happy chance to meet you, M. Isidore! I have lost my last centime and mislaid Mr. Welbourne, and am positively dying for a cup of tea."