"I know that you have cost me a guinea!" he answered. "See, they have swept it off. And as I staked it for nothing else but to have an excuse to address the handsomest woman in the room----"
"You do not know what I am--behind my mask," she retorted.
"No," he replied, hardily, "and therefore I am going--I am going----"
"So am I!" my mistress answered, with a quickness that both surprised and delighted me. "Good night, good spendthrift! You are going; and I am going."
"Well hit!" he replied, with a grin. "And well content if we go together! Yet I think I know how I could keep you!"
"Yes?" she said, indifferently.
"By deserving the name," he answered. "You called me spendthrift."
On that I do not know whether she thought him too forward, or saw that I was nearly at the end of my patience--which it may be imagined was no little tried by this badinage--but she turned her shoulder to him outright, and spoke a word to me in a low tone. Then: "Give me a guinea, Dick!" she said, pretty loudly. "I think I'll play."
[CHAPTER V]
She spoke confidently and with a grand air, knowing that I had brought a guinea with me; so that I had neither the heart to shame her, nor the courage to displease her. Though it was the ninth part of my income therefore, and it seemed to me sheer madness or worse to stake such a sum on a single card, and win or lose it in a moment, I lugged it out and gave it to her. Even then, knowing her to have no more skill in the game than I had, I was at a stand, wondering what she would do with it; but with the tact which never fails a woman she laid it where the gentleman had placed his. With better luck; for in a twinkling, and before I thought it well begun, the deal was over, the players sat back, and swore, and the banker, giving and taking here and there, thrust a guinea over to our guinea. I was in a sweat to take both up before anyone cheated us; but she nudged me, and said with her finest air, "Let it lie, Dick! Do you hear? Let it lie."