They did not appear, as the casual holiday crowd had done, free from care.  There was comparatively little talking among them, and each round of the monotonous game was got through far quicker than had been the case the week before.  Money was risked, lost, or gained, with extraordinary swiftness and precision.

A good many of the people there, women as well as men, glanced idly for a moment at the two newcomers, but they soon looked away again, intent on their play.

Sylvia felt keenly interested.  She could have stopped and watched the scene for hours without wanting to play herself; but Anna Wolsky soon grew restless, and started playing.  Even risking a few francs was better to her than not gambling at all!

“It’s an odd thing,” she said in a low voice, “but I don’t see here any of the people I’m accustomed to see at Monte Carlo.  As a rule, whenever one goes to this kind of place one meets people one has seen before.  We gamblers are a caste—­a sect part!”

“I can’t bear to hear you call yourself a gambler,” said Sylvia in a low voice.

Anna laughed good-humouredly.

“Believe me, my dear, there is not the difference you apparently think there is between a gambler and the man who has never touched a card.”

Anna Wolsky looked round her as she spoke with a searching glance, and then she suddenly exclaimed,

“Yes, I do know someone here after all!  That funny-looking couple over there were at Aix-les-Bains all last summer.”

“Which people do you mean?” asked Sylvia eagerly.

“Don’t you see that long, thin man who is so queerly dressed—­and his short, fat wife?  A dreadful thing happened to them—­a great friend of theirs, a Russian, was drowned in Lac Bourget.  It made a great deal of talk in Aix at the time it happened.”

Sylvia Bailey looked across the room.  She was able to pick out in a moment the people Anna meant, and perhaps because she was in good spirits to-night, she smiled involuntarily at their rather odd appearance.

Standing just behind the croupier—­whose task it is to rake in and to deal out the money—­was a short, stout, dark woman, dressed in a bright purple gown, and wearing a pale blue bonnet particularly unbecoming to her red, massive face.  She was not paying much attention to the play, though now and again she put a five-franc piece onto the green baize.  Instead, her eyes were glancing round restlessly this way and that, almost as if she were seeking for someone.

Behind her, in strong contrast to herself, was a tall, thin, lanky man, to Sylvia’s English eyes absurdly as well as unsuitably dressed in a grey alpaca suit and a shabby Panama hat.  In his hand he held open a small book, in which he noted down all the turns of the game.  Unlike his short, stout wife, this tall, thin man seemed quite uninterested in the people about him, and Sylvia could see his lips moving, his brows frowning, as if he were absorbed in some intricate and difficult calculation.