"Her hands," Corancez whispered to Hautefeuille. "Look at her hands; even under her gloves, the hands of the genuine aristocrat. See the others beside her, the motion of those greedy and nervous paws. All those fingers are plebeian after you have seen hers. But I am afraid we have brought her bad luck. Red and 7: she has lost—Oh, lost again. That means twenty-five thousand francs. If the word were not too vulgar to apply to such a pretty woman, I would say, 'What stomach!' She is going on."
The young woman continued to distribute her gold and bank-notes upon the same number, the same squares, and upon the black, and it seemed as though neither the numbers, nor the squares, nor the black would ever appear again. A few more turns, and the columns of twenty-franc and hundred-franc pieces had disappeared as into a crucible, and, six by six, the bank-notes had gone under the rake to join the pile heaped up before the croupier. A quarter of an hour had scarcely elapsed since the arrival of Corancez and Hautefeuille, and the Baroness Ely had nothing before her but a little empty purse and a Russian cigarette case of gold inlaid with niello and with sapphires, rubies, and diamonds. The young woman weighed the case in her hand, while another turn of the wheel brought up the red again.
It was the eleventh time that this color had won. Suddenly, with the same air of indifference, she turned to her neighbor, a large man of about fifty years, with a square head and wearing spectacles, who had abandoned his book of calculations to play simply against her. He had before him now a mass of gold and bank-notes.
"Monsieur," she said, handing him the case, "will you give me a thousand francs for this box?"
She spoke loud enough for Corancez and Hautefeuille, who had approached, to hear this strange and unexpected question.
"But we should be the ones to lend her the money," said Pierre.
"I should not advise you to offer it," the other replied. "She is very much of an archduchess when she chooses, and I fancy she would not receive us well. However, there will be plenty of usurers to buy the case at that price, if the man in the spectacles does not accept.—He is speaking German. He doesn't understand.—Well, what did I tell you?"
As though to support Corancez's pretensions to prophecy, just as Madame de Carlsberg was replying to her neighbor in German, the hook-nose of a jewel merchant penetrated the crowd, a hand held out the thousand-franc note, and the gold case disappeared. The Baroness did not deign even to glance at this personage, who was one of the innumerable moneylenders that practise a vagrant usury around the tables. She took the bank-note, and twisted it a moment without unfolding it. She waited until the red had appeared twice more; seemed to hesitate; then, with the end of her rake, pushed the note toward the croupier, saying:—
"On the red."
The ball spun round again, and this time it was the black. Baroness Ely picked up her fan and her empty purse, and rose. In the movement of the crowd, while he was endeavoring to extricate himself in order to reach her, Corancez suddenly noticed that he had lost Hautefeuille.