Zoe blushed at all this, and said to Vizard, "I should like to see the other rooms." She whispered to Miss Maitland, "Surely they are not very select in this one.""Lead on," said Vizard; "that is the way."Fanny had not parted with his arm all this time. As they followed the others, he said, "But she will find it is all the same thing."Fanny laughed in his face. "Don't you _see?_ C'est la chasse au Severne qui commence.""En voil'a un se'v'ere," replied he.
She was mute. She had not learned that sort of French in her finishing-school. I forgive it.
The next room was the same thing over again.
Zoe stood a moment and drank everything in, then turned to Vizard, blushed, and said, "May we play a little now?""Why, of course."
"Fanny!"
"No; you begin, dear. We will stand by and wish you success.""You are a coward," said Zoe, loftily; and went to the table with more changes of color than veteran lancers betray in charging infantry. It was the _roulette_ table she chose. That seems a law of her sex. The true solution is not so profound as some that have been offered. It is this:
_trente et quarante_ is not only unintelligible, but uninteresting. At _roulette_ there is a pictorial object and dramatic incident; the board, the turning of the _moulinet,_ and the swift revolutions of an ivory ball, its lowered speed, its irregular bounds, and its final settlement in one of the many holes, numbered and colored. Here the female understanding sees something it can grasp, and, above all, the female eye catches something pictorial and amusing outside the loss or gain; and so she goes, by her nature, to _roulette,_ which is a greater swindle than the other.
Zoe staked five pounds on No. 21, for an excellent reason; she was in her twenty-first year. The ball was so illogical as to go into No. 3, and she lost. She stood by her number and lost again. She lost thirteen times in succession.
The fourteenth time the ball rolled into 21, and the croupier handed her thirty-five times her stake, and a lot more for color.