"Since we are to play," said Carigny, "you must allow me to present you to my son. He does not play; I have discouraged him. But he will read my cards for me. You do not object?"
Their clasped hands fell apart. The Prince looked his incomprehension. The young man was making him a bow of sorts.
"I am charmed," he answered. "But read your cards? I don't understand."
Dupontel arrested an impulse to step forward, to interrupt, to interfere in some manner. He saw that Carigny smiled.
"Yes," he answered. "Tell me which card is which, you know. You see,
Monpavon, for the last five years I have been blind!"
His voice, with its foreign accent rendering strange his precise and old-fashioned French, continued to explain. But Dupontel did not hear what it said. He was looking at the Prince. Save for an astonished knitting of the brows, he had not moved; he preserved, under those watching eyes, his attitude. The worst had come to pass the thing he feared had ambushed him? and he was facing it. But presently he raised his right hand, the hand that had touched Carigny's, looked at it thoughtfully, and brushed it with his left. If he had any virtue, he was exhibiting it now. One could defeat him but not discountenance him.
"Certainly," he was saying presently. "The right of choice is yours,
Carigny. Ecarte, since you wish it, by all means."
Dupontel, to whom he had explained himself, knew what that handshake had meant. In the move toward the card-table, he caught his eye. The Prince smiled at him. "You see how useless it is to strive," he seemed to say.
The pretence that the onlookers were present by chance was gone when the Prince and his adversary sat down opposite to each other at the little green table. The onlookers thronged about them, frankly curious. The young man, Carigny's son, stood leaning over his father's shoulder. Dupontel was at the back of his friend. He saw the green table across the Prince's white head. The deal fell to the Prince.
He had the pack in his hand when he spoke across to Carigny.