"I know what you wish to say," Lato continues, bitterly. "You wonder why, under these circumstances, I cannot shake off the old habit. What would you have? Hitherto I have won almost constantly; now my luck has turned, and yet I cannot control myself. Those who have not this cursed love of play in their blood cannot understand it, but play is the only thing in the world in which I can become absorbed,--the only thing that can rid me of all sorts of thoughts which I never ought to entertain. There! now you know!"
He draws a deep, hoarse breath, then laughs a hard, wooden laugh. Harry is very uncomfortable: he has never before seen Lato like this. It distresses him to notice how his friend has changed in looks of late. His eyes are hollow and unnaturally bright, his lips are dry and cracked as from fever, and he is more restless than is his wont.
"Poor Lato! what fresh trouble have you had lately?" asks Harry, longing to express his sympathy.
Lato flushes crimson, then nervously curls into dog's-ears the leaves of a Greek grammar on the table, and shrugs his shoulders.
"Oh, nothing,--disagreeable domestic complications," he mutters, evasively.
"Nothing new has happened, then?" asks Harry, looking at him keenly.
Lato cannot endure his gaze. "What could have happened?" he breaks forth.
"How do you get along with your wife?"
"Not at all,--worse every day," Treurenberg says, dryly. "And now comes this cursed, meddling Polish jackanapes----"
"If the gentlemen please, the Baroness sends me to say that coffee is served." With these words Blasius makes his appearance at the door. Lato springs hastily to his feet. The conversation is at an end.