He made his way to the further table, and gradually reached a point of vantage where he could see those of the players who were seated round the green cloth.

As is generally the case when really high play is going on, the people who were playing, as also those watching them, were curiously quiet.

And then, with a shock of surprise which sent the blood to his cheeks, Chester suddenly saw that Sylvia Bailey was sitting nearly opposite to where he himself was standing.

There are certain scenes, certain human groupings of individuals, which remain fixed for ever against the screen of memory.  Bill Chester will never forget the sight which was presented to him in the Lacville Casino by the particular group on which his tired eyes became focussed with growing amazement and attention.

Sylvia was sitting at the baccarat table next to the man who was acting as Banker.  She was evidently absorbed in the fortunes of the game, and she followed the slow falling of the fateful cards with rather feverish intentness.

Her small gloved hands rested on the table, one of them loosely holding a tiny ivory rake; and on a bank-note spread open on the green cloth before her were two neat piles of gold, the one composed of twenty-franc, the other of ten-franc pieces.

Chester, with a strange feeling of fear and anger clutching at his heart, told himself that he had never seen Sylvia look as she looked to-night.  She was more than pretty—­she was lovely, and above all, alive—­vividly alive.  There was a bright colour on her cheek, and a soft light shining in her eyes.

The row of pearls which had occasioned the only serious difference which had ever arisen between them, rose and fell softly on the bosom of her black lace dress.

Chester also gradually became aware that his beautiful friend and client formed a centre of attraction to those standing round the gambling-table.  Both the men and the women stared at her, some enviously, but more with kindly admiration, for beauty is sure of its tribute in any French audience, and Sylvia Bailey to-night looked radiantly lovely—­lovely and yet surely unhappy and ill-at-ease.

Well might she look both in such a place and among such a crew!  So the English lawyer angrily told himself.

Now and again she turned and spoke in an eager, intimate fashion to a man sitting next her on her left.  This man, oddly enough, was not playing.

Sylvia Bailey’s companion was obviously a Frenchman, or so Chester felt sure, for now he found himself concentrating his attention on Mrs. Bailey’s neighbour rather than on her.  This man, to whom she kept turning and speaking in a low, earnest tone, was slim and fair, and what could be seen of his evening clothes fitted scrupulously well.  The Englishman, looking at him with alien, jealous eyes, decided within himself that the Frenchman with whom Sylvia seemed to be on such friendly terms, was a foppish-looking fellow, not at all the sort of man she ought to have “picked up” on her travels.