expression of scrutiny, tending farther and farther away from the glow of
mingled undefined sensibilities forming admiration. At one moment they
followed the movements of the figure, of the arms and hands, as this
problematic sylph bent forward to deposit her stake with an air of firm
choice; and the next they returned to the face which, at present
unaffected by beholders, was directed steadily toward the game. The sylph
was a winner; and as her taper fingers, delicately gloved in pale-gray,
were adjusting the coins which had been pushed toward her in order to pass
them back again to the winning point, she looked round her with a survey
too markedly cold and neutral not to have in it a little of that nature
which we call art concealing an inward exultation.

But in the course of that survey her eyes met Deronda's, and instead of
averting them as she would have desired to do, she was unpleasantly
conscious that they were arrested--how long? The darting sense that he was
measuring her and looking down on her as an inferior, that he was of
different quality from the human dross around her, that he felt himself in
a region outside and above her, and was examining her as a specimen of a
lower order, roused a tingling resentment which stretched the moment with
conflict. It did not bring the blood to her cheeks, but it sent it away
from her lips. She controlled herself by the help of an inward defiance,
and without other sign of emotion than this lip-paleness turned to her
play. But Deronda's gaze seemed to have acted as an evil eye. Her stake
was gone. No matter; she had been winning ever since she took to roulette
with a few napoleons at command, and had a considerable reserve. She had
begun to believe in her luck, others had begun to believe in it: she had
visions of being followed by a _cortege_ who would worship her as a
goddess of luck and watch her play as a directing augury. Such things had
been known of male gamblers; why should not a woman have a like supremacy?
Her friend and chaperon who had not wished her to play at first was