All manner of thoughts and surmises thronged upon Zoe Vizard; but each
way of accounting for the mystery contradicted some plain fact or other;
so she was driven at last to a woman's remedy. She would wait, and watch.
Severne would probably come back, and somehow furnish the key. Meantime
her eye was not likely to leave the Klosking, nor her ear to miss a
syllable the Klosking might utter.
She whispered to Vizard, in a very peculiar tone, "I will play at this
table," and stepped up to it, with the word.
The duration of such beauty as Zoe's is proverbially limited; but the
limit to its power, while it does last, has not yet been discovered. It
is a fact that, as soon as she came close to the table two male gamblers
looked up, saw her, wondered at her, and actually jumped up and offered
their seats: she made a courteous inclination of the head, and installed
Miss Maitland in one seat, without reserve. She put a little gold on the
table, and asked Miss Maitland, in a whisper, to play for her. She
herself had neither eye nor ear except for Ina Klosking. That lady was
having a discussion, _sotto voce,_ with Ashmead; and if she had been one
of your mumblers whose name is legion, even Zoe's swift ear could have
caught little or nothing.
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