, there was
an unattached air during Potts' cooling discourse of turf and tables,
except when he tossed them a morsel of tragedy, or the latest joke, not
yet past the full gallop on its course. Their sparkle was transient;
woman had them fast. Compelled to think of them as not serious members
of our group, he assisted at the crush-room exit, and the happy riddance
of the beautiful cousins dedicated to the merry London midnights'
further pastures.

Fleetwood's word was extracted, that he would visit the 'palazzo' within
a couple of hours.

Potts exclaimed: 'Good. You promise. Hang me, if I don't think it 's the
only certain thing a man can depend upon in this world.'

He left the earl and Gower Woodseer to their lunatic talk. He still had
his ideas about the association of the pair. 'Hard-headed player of his
own game, that Woodseer, spite of his Mumbo-Jumbo-oracle kind of talk.'

Mallard's turn of luck downward to the deadly drop had come under Potts'
first inspection of the table. Admiring his friend's audacity, deploring
his rashness, reproving his persistency, Potts allowed his verdict to
go by results; for it was clear that Mallard and Fortune were in
opposition. Something like real awe of the tremendous encounter kept
him from a plunge or a bet. Mallard had got the vertigo, he reported the
gambler's launch on dementedness to the earl. Gower's less experienced
optics perceived it. The plainly doomed duellist with the insensible
Black Goddess offered her all the advantages of the Immortals challenged
by flesh. His effort to smile was a line cut awry in wood; his big eyes
were those of a cat for sociability; he looked cursed, and still he
wore the smile. In this condition, the gambler runs to emptiness of
everything he has, his money, his heart, his brains, like a coal-truck
on the incline of the rails to a collier.

Mallard applied to the earl for a loan of fifty guineas. He had them
and lost them, and he came, not begging, blustering for a second supply;
quite in the wrong tone, Potts knew. Fleetwood said: 'Back it with
pistols, Brosey'; and, as Potts related subsequently, 'Old Brosey had
the look of a staked horse.'

Fortune and he having now closed the struggle, perforce of his total
disarmament, he regained the wits we forfeit when we engage her. He
said to his friend Chummy: 'Abrane tomorrow? Ah, yes, punts a Thames
waterman. Start of--how many yards? Sunbury-Walton: good reach. Course
of two miles: Brane