Page:Belloc Lowndes--The chink in the armour.djvu/278

268 "If Madame leaves, the luck will go with her!" she heard one or two people murmur discontentedly.

Chester was looking at her with amused, sarcastic, disapproving eyes.

"Well!" he exclaimed. "I don't wonder you enjoy gambling, Sylvia! Are you often taken this way? How much of that poor fellow's money have you won?"

"Ninety pounds," she answered mechanically.

"Ninety pounds! And have you ever lost as much as that, may I ask, in an evening?" he was still speaking with a good deal of sarcasm in his voice. But still, "money talks," and even against his will Chester was impressed. Ninety pounds represents a very heavy bill of costs in a country solicitor's practice.

Sylvia looked dully into his face.

"No," she said slowly. "No, the most I ever lost in one evening was ten pounds. I always left off playing when I had lost ten pounds. That is the one advantage the player has over the banker—he can stop playing when he has lost a small sum."

"Oh! I see!" exclaimed Chester drily.

And then they became silent, for close by where they now stood, a little apart from the table, an angry altercation was going on between Monsieur and Madame Wachner. It was the first time Sylvia had ever heard the worthy couple quarrelling in public the one with the other.

"I tell you I will not go away!" L'Ami Fritz was saying between his teeth. "I feel that to-night I am in luck, in great luck! What I ask you to do, Sophie, is to go away yourself, and leave me alone. I have made a