Ricardo.

Near to him a woman sneered, and a man said, pityingly: "She was
pretty, that little one. It is regrettable that she has lost."

A few minutes afterwards Ricardo finished his cigar and strolled
back into the rooms, making his way to the big table just on the
right hand of the entrance, where the play as a rule runs high. It
was clearly running high tonight. For so deep a crowd thronged
about the table that Ricardo could only by standing on tiptoe see
the faces of the players. Of the banker he could not catch a
glimpse. But though the crowd remained, its units were constantly
changing, and it was not long before Ricardo found himself
standing in the front rank of the spectators, just behind the
players seated in the chairs. The oval green table was spread out
beneath him littered with bank-notes. Ricardo turned his eyes to
the left, and saw seated at the middle of the table the man who
was holding the bank. Ricardo recognised him with a start of
surprise. He was a young Englishman, Harry Wethermill, who, after
a brilliant career at Oxford and at Munich, had so turned his
scientific genius to account that he had made a fortune for
himself at the age of twenty-eight.

He sat at the table with the indifferent look of the habitual
player upon his cleanly chiselled face. But it was plain that his
good fortune stayed at his elbow tonight, for opposite to him the
croupier was arranging with extraordinary deftness piles of bank-
notes in the order of their value. The bank was winning heavily.
Even as Ricardo looked Wethermill turned up "a natural," and the
croupier swept in the stakes from either side.