At the Villa Rose | Page 2

at the back, and in the shadow of that hat her face
was masked. All that he could see was a pair of long diamond eardrops,
which sparkled and trembled as she moved her head--and that she did
constantly. Now she stared moodily at the ground; now she flung
herself back; then she twisted nervously to the right, and then a
moment afterwards to the left; and then again she stared in front of her,
swinging a satin slipper backwards and forwards against the pavement
with the petulance of a child. All her movements were spasmodic; she
was on the verge of hysteria. Ricardo was expecting her to burst into
tears, when she sprang up and as swiftly as she had come she hurried
back into the rooms. "Summer lightning," thought Mr. Ricardo.
Near to him a woman sneered, and a man said, pityingly: "She was
pretty, that little one. It is regrettable that she has lost."
A few minutes afterwards Ricardo finished his cigar and strolled back
into the rooms, making his way to the big table just on the right hand of
the entrance, where the play as a rule runs high. It was clearly running
high tonight. For so deep a crowd thronged about the table that Ricardo
could only by standing on tiptoe see the faces of the players. Of the
banker he could not catch a glimpse. But though the crowd remained,
its units were constantly changing, and it was not long before Ricardo
found himself standing in the front rank of the spectators, just behind
the players seated in the chairs. The oval green table was spread out
beneath him littered with bank-notes. Ricardo turned his eyes to the left,
and saw seated at the middle of the table the man who was holding the
bank. Ricardo recognised him with a start of surprise. He was a young
Englishman, Harry Wethermill, who, after a brilliant career at Oxford
and at Munich, had so turned his scientific genius to account that he
had made a fortune for himself at the age of twenty-eight.
He sat at the table with the indifferent look of the habitual player upon
his cleanly chiselled face. But it was plain that his good fortune stayed
at his elbow tonight, for opposite to him the croupier was arranging
with extraordinary deftness piles of bank- notes in the order of their

value. The bank was winning heavily. Even as Ricardo looked
Wethermill turned up "a natural," and the croupier swept in the stakes
from either side.
"Faites vos jeux, messieurs. Le jeu est fait?" the croupier cried, all in a
breath, and repeated the words. Wethermill waited with his hand upon
the wooden frame in which the cards were stacked. He glanced round
the table while the stakes were being laid upon the cloth, and suddenly
his face flashed from languor into interest. Almost opposite to him a
small, white-gloved hand holding a five- louis note was thrust forward
between the shoulders of two men seated at the table. Wethermill
leaned forward and shook his head with a smile. With a gesture he
refused the stake. But he was too late. The fingers of the hand had
opened, the note fluttered down on to the cloth, the money was staked.
At once he leaned back in his chair.
"Il y a une suite," he said quietly. He relinquished the bank rather than
play against that five-louis note. The stakes were taken up by their
owners.
The croupier began to count Wethermill's winnings, and Ricardo,
curious to know whose small, delicately gloved hand it was which had
brought the game to so abrupt a termination, leaned forward. He
recognised the young girl in the white satin dress and the big black hat
whose nerves had got the better of her a few minutes since in the
garden. He saw her now clearly, and thought her of an entrancing
loveliness. She was moderately tall, fair of skin, with a fresh colouring
upon her cheeks which she owed to nothing but her youth. Her hair was
of a light brown with a sheen upon it, her forehead broad, her eyes dark
and wonderfully clear. But there was something more than her beauty
to attract him. He had a strong belief that somewhere, some while ago,
he had already seen her. And this belief grew and haunted him. He was
still vaguely puzzling his brains to fix the place when the croupier
finished his reckoning.
"There are two thousand louis in the bank," he cried. "Who will take on
the bank for two thousand louis?"

No one, however, was willing. A fresh bank was put up for sale, and
Wethermill, still sitting in the dealer's chair, bought it. He spoke at once
to an attendant, and the man