Every now and then they clinked their glasses together to some party
toast; but otherwise they were quiet enough at first. People of the same
calibre sat round other tables in the immediate neighbourhood; and at
another were intermingled well-dressed persons from the town, who were
carrying on a whispered conversation, and who appeared anxious.

The shouting, and the noise, and the laughter kept increasing. There
were already drunken faces at the table, and in several directions
quarrelling and the sound of blows were beginning to be heard. Federigo,
who seemed to be known to many in the rooms, had mixed with the crowd,
and Salvé's neighbours on either side were now playing eagerly with
dice, diving from time to time for small silver pieces into heavy
leathern purses, that seemed to have been destined for sums very
different from what their present meagre contents represented. So many
debased, avaricious countenances as he saw around him he had never
imagined that it would be possible to collect in one spot, and he made
up his mind to have no more to do with them than he could possibly help.
He might congratulate himself, he thought, if he escaped from them with
a whole skin, and he felt in his breast-pocket to see that his knife was
there.

One of the North Americans who had nodded to him, in virtue of his
sailor's dress, when he entered, came over to him now and asked him to
come and sit with them; but as he rather felt himself under Federigo's
charge, he declined just then. Shortly after, to his surprise, he saw
the señorita standing at the gaming-table, with her head, which was all
he could see, beautifully dressed; and he observed that the eyes of the
keeper of the tavern--a tall, lean Portuguese, with a long, sallow face,
and hardly any hair on his head, who himself presided at the table--were
turned towards her continually with a look of humble, tender concern.