Suddenly Sylvia raised her head, throwing it back with a graceful gesture, and Chester’s eyes travelled on to the person who was standing just behind her, and to whom she had now begun speaking with smiling animation.

This was a woman—­short, stout, and swarthy—­dressed in a bright purple gown, and wearing a pale blue bonnet which was singularly unbecoming to her red, massive face.  Chester rather wondered that such an odd, and yes—­such a respectable-looking person could be a member of this gambling club.  She reminded him of the stout old housekeeper in a big English country house near Market Dalling.

Sylvia seemed also to include in her talk a man who was standing next the fat woman.  He was tall and lanky, absurdly and unsuitably dressed, to the English onlooker, in a white alpaca suit and a shabby Panama hat.  In his hand he held a little book, in which he noted down every turn of the game, and it was clear to Chester that, though he listened to Mrs. Bailey with civility, he was quite uninterested in what she was saying.

Very different was the attitude of the woman; she seemed absorbed in Sylvia’s remarks, and she leant forward familiarly, throwing all her weight on the back of the chair on which Mrs. Bailey was sitting.  Sometimes as she spoke she smiled in a way that showed her large, strong teeth.

Chester thought them both odd, common-looking people.  He was surprised that Sylvia knew them—­nay more, that she seemed on such friendly terms with them; and he noticed that the Frenchman sitting next to her—­the dandyish-looking fellow to whom she had been talking just now—­took no part at all in her present conversation.  Once, indeed, he looked up and frowned, as if the chatter going on between Mrs. Bailey and her fat friend fretted and disturbed him.

Play had again begun in earnest, and Sylvia turned her attention to the table.  Her neighbour whispered something which at once caused her to take up two napoleons and a ten-franc piece from the pile of gold in front of her.  Very deliberately she placed the coins within the ruled-off space reserved for the stakes.

Bill Chester, staring across at her, felt as if he were in a nightmare—­gazing at something which was not real, and which would vanish if looked at long enough.

Could that lovely young woman, who sat there, looking so much at home, with the little rake in her hand be Sylvia Bailey, the quiet young widow whose perfect propriety of conduct had always earned the praise of those matrons of Market Dalling, whom Chester’s own giddier sisters called by the irreverent name of “old cats”?  It was fortunate that none of these respectable ladies could see Sylvia now!

To those who regard gambling as justifiable, provided the gambler’s means allow of it, even to those who habitually see women indulging in games of chance, there will, of course, be something absurd in the point of view of the solicitor.  But to such a man as Bill Chester, the sight of the woman for whom he had always felt a very sincere respect, as well as a far more enduring and jealous affection than he quite realised, sitting there at a public gaming table, was a staggering—­nay, a disgusting—­spectacle.