Excerpt from The Rival Beauties, Vol. 3 of 3: A Novel In one direction a couple of gamesters, too indolent, or too impatient, to trust their fortunes to the slower process of the cards, were hazarding large sums upon a single throw of the dice; in another, a party were collected round a roulette table, established in an angle of the apartment, which had just been lighted up; at the principal table, sundry of the guests had paired off at eca/rte, while others stood by, and made heavy bets upon the game. In short, all were occupied save two one, a splendid-looking man of some four or five and thirty, evidently a native Italian - and the other a youth, whose fresh and ruddy complexion, well opened gray eye, and auburn hair, at once demonstrated his English origin. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.