Another pair of plate-glass doors open into an inner chamber, where the silence is still more profound, and where around a larger table sit one row of players; while only here and there a little group of outsiders stand behind their chairs.

There is more gilding on the walls and ceiling of this chamber; the frescoes are more delicate; the crystal chandeliers are adorned with rich clusters of sparkling drops, that twinkle like diamonds in the sun.

This is the temple of gold; and in this splendid chamber one may hazard no smaller stake than half a napoleon.

There are women here; but not so many women as in the outer saloon; and the women here are younger and prettier and more carefully dressed than those who stake only silver.
The prettiest and the youngest woman in this golden chamber on one particular August afternoon, nine years after the death of Tom Halliday, was a girl who stood behind the chair of a military-looking Englishman, an old man whose handsome face was a little disfigured by those traces which late hours and dissipated habits are supposed to leave behind them.
The girl held a card in one hand and a pin in the other, and was occupied in some mysterious process, by which she kept note of the Englishman's play.

She was very young, with a delicate face, in whose softer lines there was a refined likeness to the features of the man whose play she watched.