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"What else do you suppose?" she retorted. "Are you going only to sit here, and grow sour, and let me look at you?" "Madame," said De Griers confidentially, "les chances peuvent tourner. Une seule mauvaise chance, et vous perdrez tout surtout avec votre jeu. C'etait terrible!" "Oui; vous perdrez absolument," put in Mlle. Blanche. "What has that got to do with YOU?" retorted the old lady.
Blanche and De Griers had been making a great deal of the young Prince, under the very nose of the poor General. In short, the company, though decorous and conventional, was in a gay, familiar mood.
Take them, and tomorrow throw them in De Griers' face." She returned no answer. "Or, if you should prefer," I continued, "let me take them to him myself tomorrow yes, early tomorrow morning. Shall I?" Then all at once she burst out laughing, and laughed for a long while. With astonishment and a feeling of offence I gazed at her.
"You never thought of giving him an income which would compensate a little for what his father failed to do for him?" There was asperity in her tone. "He wouldn't take from me what his father didn't give him." Suddenly an idea seized him. "Look here," he said, "you're a friend of the Griers, why don't you help keep things straight between the two concerns? You could do it.
I too pressed forward towards the table, and ranged myself by the Grandmother's side; while Martha and Potapitch remained somewhere in the background among the crowd, and the General, Polina, and De Griers, with Mlle. Blanche, also remained hidden among the spectators.
I am a general's widow myself. But, after all, why should I drag the whole party with me? I will go and see the sights with only Alexis Ivanovitch as my escort." De Griers strongly insisted that EVERY ONE ought to accompany her. Indeed, he launched out into a perfect shower of charming phrases concerning the pleasure of acting as her cicerone, and so forth. Every one was touched with his words.
"Quite so, quite so," I interrupted in some astonishment. "I admit that. Yet that is not the question." Whereupon I related to him in detail the incident of two days ago. I spoke of Polina's outburst, of my encounter with the Baron, of my dismissal, of the General's extraordinary pusillanimity, and of the call which De Griers had that morning paid me.
Without knocking at the door, or in any way announcing our presence, I threw open the portals, and the Grandmother was borne through them in triumph. As though of set purpose, the whole party chanced at that moment to be assembled in the General's study. The General was present, and also Polina, the children, the latter's nurses, De Griers, Mlle.
How sorry I am for them, and for Grandmamma! But when are you going to kill De Griers? Surely you do not intend actually to murder him? You fool! Do you suppose that I should ALLOW you to fight De Griers? Nor shall you kill the Baron." Here she burst out laughing. "How absurd you looked when you were talking to the Burmergelms! I was watching you all the time watching you from where I was sitting.
Every gambler knows how a person may sit a day and a night at cards without ever casting a glance to right or to left. Meanwhile, that day some other very important events were passing in our hotel. As early as eleven o'clock that is to say, before the Grandmother had quitted her rooms the General and De Griers decided upon their last stroke.
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