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th the doorkeeper's averment that Mr. Bailey Penfield was out, persuaded P. Sybarite that this last was neither more nor less than the proprietor of the premises. But this conclusion perturbed, completely unsettling his conviction regarding the _soi-disant_ Miss Lessing; he couldn't imagine either her or Miss Marian Blessington in any way involved with a common (or even a proper) gambler. To feel obliged constantly to revise his hasty inferences, he considered tremendously tiresome. It left one all up in the air! His tour ended at last in a pause by the roulette table at the rear of the room. Curious to watch the game in being, he lingered there, head cocked shrewdly on one shoulder, a speculative pensiveness informing his eyes, his interest plainly aloof and impersonal. This despite the fact that his emotions of intestinal felicity were momentarily becoming more intense: the torchlight procession was in full swing, leaving an enduring refulgence wherever it passed. There were perhaps half a dozen players round the board--four on one wing, two on the other. Of the latter, one was that very young man who had been responsible for P. Sybarite's change of mind with regard to going home. With a bored air this prodigal was frittering away five-dollar notes on the colours, the columns, and the dozens: his ill success stupendous, his apparent indifference positively magnificent. But in the course of the little while that P. Sybarite watched, he either grew weary or succeeded in emptying his pockets, and ceasing to play, sat back with a grunt of impatience more than of disgust. The ball ran its course thrice before he moved. Then abruptly lifting his finger to the croupier: "Five on the red, Andy," said he. "Five on the red," repeated the croupier; and set aside a chocolate-coloured chip in memorandum of the wager. When the ball settled again to rest, the announcement was monotonously recited: "Nine, red, odd, first dozen." And the blase prodigal was presented with the chocolate-coloured token. Carelessly he tossed it upon the red diamond. Black won. Unperturbed, he made a second oral bet, this time on black, and lost; increased his wager to ten dollars on black--and lost; made it twenty, shifted to red, and lost; dropped back to five-dollar bets for three turns of the wheel, and lost them all. Fifty dollars in debt to the house, he rose, nodded casually to the croupier, left the room. In mingled envy and amazem
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