The man gave him a double handful, which he put down between Aileen’s white arms.
“One hundred on two. One hundred on four. One hundred on six. One hundred on eight.”
The pieces were five-dollar gold pieces, and Aileen quickly built up the little yellow stacks and shoved them in place. Again the other players stopped and began to watch the odd pair. Aileen’s red-gold head, and pink cheeks, and swimming eyes, her body swathed in silks and rich laces; and Lynde, erect, his shirt bosom snowy white, his face dark, almost coppery, his eyes and hair black—they were indeed a strikingly assorted pair.
“What’s this? What’s this?” asked Grier, coming up. “Who’s plunging? You, Mrs. Cowperwood?”
“Not plunging,” replied Lynde, indifferently. “We’re merely working out a formula—Mrs. Cowperwood and I. We’re doing it together.”
Aileen smiled. She was in her element at last. She was beginning to shine. She was attracting attention.
“One hundred on twelve. One hundred on eighteen. One hundred on twenty-six.”
“Good heavens, what are you up to, Lynde?” exclaimed Lord, leaving Mrs. Rhees and coming over. She followed. Strangers also were gathering. The business of the place was at its topmost toss—it being two o’clock in the morning—and the rooms were full.
“How interesting!” observed Miss Lanman, at the other end of the table, pausing in her playing and staring. McKibben, who was beside her, also paused. “They’re plunging. Do look at all the money! Goodness, isn’t she daring-looking—and he?” Aileen’s shining arm was moving deftly, showily about.
“Look at the bills he’s breaking!” Lynde was taking out a thick layer of fresh, yellow bills which he was exchanging for gold. “They make a striking pair, don’t they?”
The board was now practically covered with Lynde’s gold in quaint little stacks. He had followed a system called Mazarin, which should give him five for one, and possibly break the bank. Quite a crowd swarmed about the table, their faces glowing in the artificial light. The exclamation “plunging!” “plunging!” was to be heard whispered here and there. Lynde was delightfully cool and straight. His lithe body was quite erect, his eyes reflective, his teeth set over an unlighted cigarette. Aileen was excited as a child, delighted to be once more the center of comment. Lord looked at her with sympathetic eyes. He liked her. Well, let her he amused. It was good for her now and then; but Lynde was a fool to make a show of himself and risk so much money.
“Table closed!” called the croupier, and instantly the little ball began to spin. All eyes followed it. Round and round it went—Aileen as keen an observer as any. Her face was flushed, her eyes bright.
“If we lose this,” said Lynde, “we will make one more bet double, and then if we don’t win that we’ll quit.” He was already out nearly three thousand dollars.
“Oh yes, indeed! Only I think we ought to quit now. Here goes two thousand if we don’t win. Don’t you think that’s quite enough? I haven’t brought you much luck, have I?”
“You are luck,” he whispered. “All the luck I want. One more. Stand by me for one more try, will you? If we win I’ll quit.”
The little ball clicked even as she nodded, and the croupier, paying out on a few small stacks here and there, raked all the rest solemnly into the receiving orifice, while murmurs of sympathetic dissatisfaction went up here and there.
“How much did they have on the board?” asked Miss Lanman of McKibben, in surprise. “It must have been a great deal, wasn’t it?”
“Oh, two thousand dollars, perhaps. That isn’t so high here, though. People do plunge for as much as eight or ten thousand. It all depends.” McKibben was in a belittling, depreciating mood.
“Oh yes, but not often, surely.”
“For the love of heavens, Polk!” exclaimed Rhees Grier, coming up and plucking at his sleeve; “if you want to give your money away give it to me. I can gather it in just as well as that croupier, and I’ll go get a truck and haul it home, where it will do some good. It’s perfectly terrible the way you are carrying on.”
Lynde took his loss with equanimity. “Now to double it,” he observed, “and get all our losses back, or go downstairs and have a rarebit and some champagne. What form of a present would please you best?—but never mind. I know a souvenir for this occasion.”
He smiled and bought more gold. Aileen stacked it up showily, if a little repentantly. She did not quite approve of this—his plunging—and yet she did; she could not help sympathizing with the plunging spirit. In a few moments it was on the board—the same combination, the same stacks, only doubled—four thousand all told. The croupier called, the ball rolled and fell. Barring three hundred dollars returned, the bank took it all.
“Well, now for a rarebit,” exclaimed Lynde, easily, turning to Lord, who stood behind him smiling. “You haven’t a match, have you? We’ve had a run of bad luck, that’s sure.”
Lynde was secretly the least bit disgruntled, for if he had won he had intended to take a portion of the winnings and put it in a necklace or some other gewgaw for Aileen. Now he must pay for it. Yet there was some satisfaction in having made an impression as a calm and indifferent, though heavy loser. He gave Aileen his arm.
“Well, my lady,” he observed, “we didn’t win; but we had a little fun out of it, I hope? That combination, if it had come out, would have set us up handsomely. Better luck next time, eh?”
He smiled genially.
“Yes, but I was to have been your luck, and I wasn’t,” replied Aileen.
“You are all the luck I want, if you’re willing to be. Come to the Richelieu tomorrow with me for lunch—will you?”
“Let me see,” replied Aileen, who, observing his ready and somewhat iron fervor, was doubtful. “I can’t do that,” she said, finally,
