"Yes, if you please," she replied, seeming to attach no importance to
her answer or to the small pile of gold and notes, all that remained of
a hundred thousand francs with which she had begun the evening.
Without another glance at the table, or a flicker of the lashes at
Vanno, she turned away; and after a whispered word or two in Lord
Dauntrey's ear, Eve went with her, in the direction of the Salle
Schmidt.
Vanno had an immediate impulse to rise, but common sense forbade. Mary
had so unmistakably shown her dislike of his presence, and the
association of his play with hers, that it was impossible for him to
follow her. Though he detested Lady Dauntrey, in his heart he preferred
her to a man as a companion for Mary, even a man like Dick Carleton;
and for the moment the jealousy he could not control was at rest. Seeing
that Lord Dauntrey's weary eyes were fixed upon him, he continued to
play, as if he had not noticed Mary's going. By and by the game began to
absorb him in a way he would not have believed possible. He became
excited, with an odd, tense excitement which had an almost fierce joy in
it. Never before had he felt an emotion exactly like this, except once,
when in India he and a friend had lain in wait for a man-eating tiger,
in the night, at the tiger's drinking place. Dimly it amused him to
compare this sensation with the other; and it surprised him, too, that
he should feel as he felt now; for gambling had always seemed to him not
only greedy and sordid and vulgar, but a stupid way of passing the time,
unworthy a man or woman of sense and breeding.
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