"I am sorry if I offended you, but she plays like an idiot."
And he turned his back to continue his furious monologue.
Don Marcos passing in a hurry without seeing the Prince opened a path in the crowd of onlookers with all the authority of a dressy personage. He had just left the gardener's daughter in haste. The news had crept through the theater causing many of the spectators to give up seeing the close of the opera in order to be present at this unheard of run of luck, which was for them a spectacle of the greatest interest.
At one of the roulette tables he saw Clorinda who was playing cautiously, with Castro standing behind her chair.
"The General" had witnessed the first part of her friend's triumph. "She's going to lose: this cannot last," she thought each time. Then she had moved away from the table, explaining her attitude to Castro and other friends. It was impossible for her to watch Alicia tranquilly as she risked such heavy stakes. It was more excitement than she could endure.
"I hope she wins a great deal, a great deal, indeed," she added with the generosity of a friend. "Poor Alicia, she needs it so much! Her affairs are going so badly!"
She had just seated herself at another table with the faint hope that luck would remember her, too; but the murmurings which reached her from the trente et quarante table, announcing the news of fresh victories, made her nervous and she attributed the loss of several twenty franc pieces to this cause. When she found she had lost two hundred, she felt that she must take her spite out on some one. Atilio, who followed her everywhere, was standing there, greeting her expressions of bad humor with an adoring smile.
"Castro, go away; don't stand there behind me. You must know you bring me bad luck. Go somewhere else."
The Prince observed how his friend, with a look of annoyance, left the widow and walked toward the door.
He thought he would follow him. By talking with Atilio, he might forget the irritation which the other woman had caused him; but as he went toward the end of the room he had a new surprise.