He seemed to be playing on some system of his own; and neighbouring players looked at him with envious eyes, as they saw the pile of gold grow larger under his thin nervous hands.

Ignorant gamesters, who stood aloof after having lost two or three napoleons, contemplated the lucky Englishman and wondered about him, while some touch of pity leavened the envy excited by his wonderful fortune.

He looked like a decayed gentleman--a man who had been a military dandy in the days that were gone, and who had all the old pretensions still, without the power to support them--a Brummel languishing at Caen; a Nash wasting slowly at Bath.
At last the girl's face brightened suddenly as she glanced upwards; and it would have been very easy for the observant traveller--if any such person had existed--to construe aright that bright change in her countenance.

The some one she had been watching for had arrived.
The doors swung open to admit a man of about five-and-twenty, whose darkly-handsome face and careless costume had something of that air which was once wont to be associated with the person and the poetry of George Gordon Lord Byron.

The new-comer was just one of those men whom very young women are apt to admire, and whom worldly-minded people are prone to distrust.