The table nearest to the door was unoccupied, but round that beyond it sat four gentlemen playing quadrille. One of them was a _noir_, whose peculiarly cadaverous appearance was heightened by his black dress. He had on his right a Chevalier de Saint Louis, and on his left a personage, no longer young, whose dark features bore the stamp of mingled sensuality and cynicism. The fourth player was a young man of exceptional good looks, wearing the somewhat extravagantly cut fashions of 1792, but with no trace of the amazing war of colours by which the young bloods of the Court party usually protested against the levelling tendencies of Jacobinism in sartorial as in other matters. The protest, however, was visible enough in the striped pearl-grey satin which glimmered upon his handsome person, and in his carefully dressed and powdered hair, becoming unmistakable in the silver buttons with the fleur-de-lys, which testified to his political opinions in a manner more courageous than prudent. A half-amused expression seemed habitual to him, and he staked with great nonchalance from a rapidly diminishing heap of coins in front of him. Eyes of the darkest grey, a straight nose neither long nor short, and an unusually well-turned mouth and chin made up a face instinct with life and vivacity. The eyes had that rare setting so full of charm, when the outer corner is at a slightly lower level than the inner—the slope which stamps a face sometimes with hauteur, sometimes with dreaminess, but always with a nameless fascination. In the present case it seemed impossible that melancholy should sit there; the glance was too direct and keen, too little likely to be veiled in introspection—a look at once indolent and daring. Despite their beauty and their delicacy, the features were scarcely effeminate. They were those of a man who could at need both think and act; and yet there were strong indications that the hour for either necessity was never a very welcome one. An inborn airy gaiety, an almost ardent carelessness reigned in them at present, and by too clear a natural tenure ever to be wholly dethroned. A diamond sparkled on one of his hands as, tilting back his spindle-legged chair, the young man clasped them at the back of his head, looking with a smile and a raising of the eyebrows at his partner, the _noir_. The smile was a very charming one. “We have no luck to-night, it seems,” he remarked, as the Chevalier de Saint Louis raked in the gains. “I should advise you to change your partner, Comte.” The melancholy _noir_ shook his head. “I could not find a better loser to bear me company,” he said with courtesy, “and if you will honour me so far, I should like to continue our alliance.”