United States or Brazil ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Anna Wolsky laughed. "Certainly!" she answered. "I propose to go on playing for some time longer." He took the Banker's seat, and the crowd dispersed to the other tables. L'Ami Fritz slipped away downstairs, but his wife stayed on in the Club by Sylvia's side. Soon the table was as much surrounded as before, for Anna was again winning.
Bailey was still standing by the table, and still holding the pink card in her hand, when her new friend came into the room. "Well?" said Anna Wolsky, speaking English with a strong foreign accent, but still speaking it remarkably well, "Have you yet decided, my dear, what we shall do this afternoon? There are a dozen things open to us, and I am absolutely at your service to do any one of them!"
But alas! there was no chance of that, for there are no Casinos, no gambling, in the land of William Tell. There came a knock at the door, and Madame Wolsky walked in. She was dressed for a journey. "I have to go out of town this morning," she said, "but the place I am going to is quite near, and I shall be back this afternoon." "Where are you going?" asked Sylvia, naïvely. "Or is it a secret?"
Also Anna Wolsky had become restless quite unlike what she had been before that hour spent by her and by Sylvia Bailey in the Club at Lacville; she had gone back there three times, refusing, almost angrily, the company of her English friend.
And this time it was Anna Wolsky who, leaning forward, nodded gravely. She attributed a run of bad luck she had had the year before to a trifling gift, twin cherries made of enamel, which a friend had given her, in her old home, on her birthday. Till she had thrown that little brooch into the sea, she had been persistently unlucky at play.
Two hours later Sylvia Bailey was having luncheon with Anna Wolsky in the Pension Malfait. The two hostelries, hers and Anna's, were in almost absurd contrast the one to the other. At the Villa du Lac everything was spacious, luxurious, and quiet.
Please don't mind my asking you this?" "I ask Madame Wolsky to go away?" he repeated, genuinely surprised. "Such a thought never even crossed my mind. It would have been very impertinent what English people would call 'cheeky' of me to do such a thing! You must indeed think me a hypocrite! Have I not shared your surprise and concern at her extraordinary disappearance? And her luggage?
Why, of course, it was there that she must look for Anna Wolsky. How stupid of her not to have thought of it! And so, after waiting a moment, she also joined the little string of people who were wending their way towards the great white building. After having paid a franc for admission, Sylvia found herself in the hall of the Casino of Lacville.
Yes, she felt more comfortable now, and slowly, almost insensibly, the glamour of play began to steal over Sylvia Bailey's senses. She began to understand the at once very simple and, to the uninitiated, intricate game of Baccarat to long, as Anna Wolsky longed, for the fateful nine, eight, five, and four to be turned up. She had fifty francs in her purse, and she ached to risk a gold piece.
"Sophie," he cried out from the garden, "the carriage is here! Come along we have wasted too much time already " Like Anna Wolsky, Monsieur Wachner grudged every moment spent away from the tables. Madame Wachner hurried her two guests into her bed-room to put on their hats. Anna Wolsky walked over to the window.
Word Of The Day