"I can't trust myself to play any more to-night—and just when I was getting my hand in! But I suppose I may thank my stars that I'm no worse off since I caught his eye—he'd have been down on me in an instant, if I had so much as blinked. And now I must bluff him out—I'm not going to be scared off.
"There's this about it, anyhow—if I've really got him hoodwinked, none of the others need worry me!" With which conditional self-encouragement, and having made sure that his enemy was no longer watching him, he turned back on an impulse, to see how Mr. Jobling was getting on. But Mr. Jobling had already gone off with his winnings.
"I wonder if he'd take a hand at écarté now?" thought Slyne. "His name came in very useful just now—and I might as well have my own money back out of him while he's got it. He'll probably be fancying himself at the moment, too."
And with that business-like ambition before him, he roamed the rooms till he could be sure that his proposed victim was nowhere within the Casino. Among the multitude there he could run across no one else who seemed likely to prove easy prey. So he gave up the quest with a philosophical shrug, got his coat and hat, and sauntered out on to the terrace, a fragrant cigar between his thin lips.
"And I'll stand myself a bottle of something at supper, to buck me up," he promised himself. "I'll look into Ciro's again presently, and get the good of the gold piece I had to waste on that scoundrelly waiter. If I chance across Jobling there, I'll get a free meal as well; or, if I should see that ass Ingoldsby, I'll tackle him while his precious keepers are out of the way. They're evidently making his feathers fly!"
The night was still, and even unusually mild for that season of the year. The moon had disappeared. Slyne looked down at the sea, all dark and mysterious, with a strong feeling of distaste; he had lately seen more than enough of it to last him a lifetime. He turned his steps toward the deserted gardens, to escape a party of chattering tourists who had trespassed on his privacy.
He was in no hurry at all for supper, and wanted a few minutes of peace and quietness in which to compose his still troubled mind, and to consider the situation as touching his lordship of Ingoldsby—who would undoubtedly prove a far more profitable companion than Mr. Jobling, even although the latter should have won the fifty thousand francs that had been his ambition.
"What a fool that fellow is, for a lawyer!" mused Slyne, having more or less successfully combated an inclination to let his thoughts stray back to the Olive Branch—and Sallie. And, Click! something answered him from behind a bush not very far from the verge of the path he was meditatively pacing.
He jumped aside at the sound, as any man would who has known what it is to be ambushed, and then, recollecting himself, stood still, with a mirthless, annoyed half-smile. He did not believe that Dubois would adopt any such noisy means to get rid of him, but—none the less, he felt impelled to find out who was in hiding behind that bush.