“Come here a minute,” said Toúrbin, taking Ilyín’s arm and stepping behind the partition with him.
The Count’s words, spoken in his usual tone, were distinctly audible from there. His voice always carried across three rooms.
“Are you daft, eh? Don’t you see that gentleman in spectacles is a sharper of the first water?”
“Oh, enough! What are you saying?”
“No enough about it! Just stop, I tell you. It’s nothing to me. Another time I’d pluck you myself, but somehow I’m sorry you should be fleeced. And maybe you have service-money too?”
“No … why do you invent such things?”
“Eh, my lad, I’ve been that way myself, so I know all those sharpers’ tricks. I tell you the chap with the spectacles is a sharper. Stop now! I ask you as a comrade.”
“Well then, I’ll only finish this one deal.”
“I know what ‘one deal’ means. Well, we’ll see.”
They went back. In this one deal Ilyín put down so many cards, and so many of them were beaten, that he lost a large sum.
Toúrbin put his hands in the middle of the table. “Now stop it! Come along.”
“No, I can’t. Leave me alone, do!” said Ilyín, irritably shuffling some bent cards without looking at Toúrbin.
“Well, go to the devil! Go and lose for certain, if that pleases you; it’s time for me to be off. Zavalshévsky, let’s go to the Marshal’s.”