“Some are as bold as a pirate,” he said, without intending anything personal. He could see many ropes and clusters of jewels, gleaming from afar. “And some of them must have plundered many a good ship of her treasure,” he added. “If I don’t put about and do some cruising, I shall never speak that boy to-night.”
He bowed, somewhat jerkily, and sauntered off. Lady Margaret continued on her way around toward that curtained door, on the other side of which she had seen Rust and Suffle with the dice.
William Phipps spent no further time in conversing with the women, beyond a word as he passed, so that finally he came to the gambling apartment, where he found his protégé. Knitting his brows for a second, in an ill-concealed annoyance, to see Adam Rust engaged in such a pursuit as this, he stood there in the doorway, hoping to catch Adam’s eye and so to admonish him silently for indulging even a moment’s whim at this vice.
“One thousand more,” said Adam, somewhat hotly.
Sir William pricked up his ears in amazement.
“Lost again!” Rust exclaimed. “The devil is in the dice!” His back was toward the curtained door. There was a mirror, however, directly across the room. Watching the glass he presently beheld the reflection of a movement, where the tapestry swayed behind him. “Three thousand now, or nothing!” he added, desperately.
The dice rattled out of the box in the silence that followed.
“It’s luck,” said Suffle, scooping up the dice to throw again.
“It’s sorcery!” exclaimed the rover, in evident heat. “Come, sir, I have two thousand left. I’ll stake it all on a single throw!”
Phipps would have interfered, had it been in any place but a private house, where the scandal would spread so swiftly. He twitched in nervousness, as he gripped the cane with which he would have liked to knock the dice-box endways.