Page:Braddon--The Trail of the Serpent.djvu/123

Rh "Yes," answered Raymond, laughing; "a surname which Monsieur Blurosset has bestowed upon me, in ridicule of my politics, which happened once to resemble those of our honest neighbour, John Bull."

Monsieur Blurosset nods an assent to Raymond's assertion, as he takes the cards in his thin yellow-white hands and begins shuffling them. He does this with a skill peculiar to himself, and you could almost guess in watching him that these little pieces of pasteboard have been his companions for twenty years. Presently he arranges them in groups of threes, fives, sevens, and nines, on the green baize, reserving a few cards in his hand; then the blue spectacles are lifted and contemplate Valerie for two or three seconds.

"Your friend is the queen of spades," he says, turning to Raymond.

"Decidedly," replies Monsieur Marolles. "How the insipid diamond beauties fade beside this gorgeous loveliness of the south!"

Valerie does not hear the compliment, which at another time she would have resented as an insult. She is absorbed in watching the groups of cards over which the blue spectacles are so intently bent.

Monsieur Blurosset seems to be working some abstruse calculations with these groups of cards, assisted by those he has in his hand. The spectacles wander from the threes to the nines; from the sevens to the fives; back again; across again; from five to nine, from three to seven; from five to three, from seven to nine. Presently he says—

"The king of spades is everywhere here." He does not look up as he speaks—never raising the spectacles from the cards. His manner of speaking is so passionless and mechanical, that he might almost be some calculating automaton.

"The king of spades," says Raymond, "is a dark and handsome young man."

"Yes," says Blurosset, "he's everywhere beside the queen of spades."

Valerie in spite of herself is absorbed by this man's words. She never takes her eyes from the spectacles and the thin pale lips of the fortune-teller.

"I do not like his influence. It is bad. This king of spades is dragging the queen down, down into the very mire." Valerie's cheeks can scarcely grow whiter than it has been ever since the revelation of the Bois de Boulogne, but she cannot repress a shudder at these words.

"There is a falsehood," continues Monsieur Blurosset; "and there is a fair woman here."

"A fair woman! That girl we saw to-night is fair," whispers