He played on steadily for over an hour, and then a halt was cried. The young gentleman from the Foreign Office and the hawknosed young woman had scored. Guy Spencer rose from the table, the poorer by a hundred and fifty pounds. He wrote his cheque with a light heart. A hundred and fifty pounds was not a great price to pay for the introduction to Stella Keane.
Mrs. L'Estrange came impressively towards him.
"Oh, Mr. Spencer, I hope you have not lost. If so, I fear you will never come near me again." His glance roved in the direction of Stella, talking, as it appeared earnestly, to that bounder of a cousin. There came a steely look into his clear, resolute eyes.
"If you will allow me, I shall be delighted to come here often to see you and Miss Keane. I suppose I had better pick up my old friend Tommy Esmond, if he is not too engrossed." But when he approached Esmond, that little rotund gentleman waved him away, in most genial fashion.
"Run away, dear boy. It is Eclipse first, and the rest nowhere. I am winning hands down." Certainly he bore the mien of a conqueror. And there, behind his chair, stood Stella Keane.
She welcomed Spencer with that faint, intimate smile which had already stirred his pulses.
"I fear I brought you bad luck," she said, in her low, caressing voice. "But to Mr. Esmond I have been the harbinger of good fortune. Are you really going?"
"I always go when I have won enough, or lost enough. You remember I gave you a little homily on gambling generally, not so long ago."
She took her hand off Esmond's chair. "Well, I will leave my good influence behind, and look after the parting guest."
She walked leisurely with him in the direction of the hall. It was deserted, but the light was brilliant, as it was in every other corner of the flat.