This seemed a miracle,
performed for her. Unconscious of irreverence, she thought that surely
the saints had worked this wonder. She forgot that, because she won,
others must lose.
"It is marvellous! But these blessed amateurs! It is always they who
have the great luck. Twice running--and after twenty-four had been spun
just before twenty-one."
The numbers were all marked in their right colours with roulette pencils
on little cards, or in well-kept notebooks by the players. Every one
knew what had "come out" at the table for many past coups.
"If you'll back twenty-four again, I'll go on it, too," said, in
English, a young man in the chair at Mary's right. He was a brown,
well-groomed, clean-shaven youth, whose hair was so light that it looked
straw-coloured in contrast with his sunburnt skin. "It's _en chaleur_,
as they say of numbers when they keep coming up. It may come a third
time running. I've seen it happen. Five repetitions is the record. What
do you say?"
"I meant to play twenty-four again, anyway," Mary answered, with the
peculiar soft obstinacy which had opened the gates of Saint
Ursula-of-the-Lake and brought her to Monte Carlo.
"You are plucky!"
"This time, surely, I've money enough for maximums on everything," Mary
said to the Frenchwoman behind her, who was now becoming superstitious
concerning the luck of her _petite dinde_.
Without protest, Madame d'Ambre selected from the piles of gold and
notes now ranged in front of Mary the stakes indicated, and, with a hand
not quite steady, placed those within her reach.
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