Monsieur Jules de Maurienne gambled, and, like most rich men who do, he generally won more than he lost. He did not gamble for the sake of winning money, however, for he was a gentleman and avarice was not among his faults, though he was not extravagant in his way of living, and knew very nearly to a penny what he spent from month to month. What he enjoyed was the excitement of fearing that he was going to lose, as he occasionally did, though with no serious damage to his fortune. Some people do daring things when there is a good reason for doing them, and they are like cats at bay; others are incapable of physical fear and never believe in danger, and they are likely healthy puppies; but one meets men now and then who fully realise every risk, and take a real pleasure in trying how far they can go without breaking their necks. None of the lower animals will do this; it is a characteristic of the born gambler.

De Maurienne did not play much in drawing-rooms or at the clubs. The stakes were rarely high enough to give him an emotion, and the sensation of winning much from friends who could not always afford to lose made him uncomfortable. He therefore frequented one of those quiet little establishments in the neighbourhood of the Piazza di Spagna where baccara, roulette, and rouge et noir go on from three in the afternoon till three in the morning, or later. He was far too refined in his taste for pleasure to waste a whole evening at such a place, and he frequented it at odd moments late in the afternoon. A man is rarely missed at that hour, and if he occasionally finds an acquaintance in a gambling den, the encounter is not mentioned afterwards, any more than those who meet there would think of calling each other by their names. For the society in the haunts of vice is extremely mixed, to say the least of it, though the owners of the establishments take infinite trouble to make it select.

Teresa Crescenzi had not succeeded in marrying de Maurienne during the summer, though they had gone together all the way from Rome to Paris in his big motor car, and nobody happened to remember who had made up the party. On some points the Italians and the French never seem to understand each other. Monsieur de Maurienne appeared to think it quite unnecessary to marry Donna Teresa Crescenzi, whereas she was equally convinced that marriage was indispensable. With the arguments and stratagems used on each side this story is not concerned; it is a cowardly thing to spy upon a lady’s secret doings, and the novelist should sometimes imitate Falstaff in judging discretion to be the better part of valour. He may, however, remind his forgetful readers that when Teresa met Maria Montalto in a quiet street and said that she had been to confession, she was wilfully misstating a fact.

It came to pass, towards Christmas, that she noticed how often her friend disappeared late in the afternoon. It is easier and more amusing to make a long story short than to make a short story long. Here, therefore, are the facts in the case. She expected to meet de Maurienne somewhere at tea, but he did not come; the next time she saw him she asked where he had been, and he named the house of another friend. Tactful inquiry soon ascertained that he had not been there either. The same thing happened three times within ten days, and Teresa made up her mind that there was another woman in the case. Being anxious not to lose time, which, at her age, still had some value, and having no scruples of any sort, she employed a private detective, who ran the truant de Maurienne to earth on the third day at the door of a gambling den in Via Belsiana. It is odd that all detectives should know just where such wicked places are, whereas the police can hardly ever find them. Why do the police not employ the detectives, as other people do? But these things are a mystery.

Teresa was so much relieved that she gave her informant a handsome present; for, like many people who have nothing, she often gave lavishly; and having noted the address of the gambling establishment and the hour at which de Maurienne had twice been seen entering it, she completed the detective’s work by watching the door herself. With a veil and a quiet-looking frock she could walk in the almost deserted street without attracting attention, and her bearing was not calculated to invite enterprise on the part of any stray dandy who might pass that way. Indeed, only one man made the mistake of speaking to her.

She only wanted to be sure that de Maurienne really went to that house on the days when he could not be found anywhere else; when she was certain of this her jealousy sank peacefully to rest. She knew that he would never ruin himself. As for the likelihood of being recognised by him, she was indifferent to that. She would have told him that she had been to confession, and would have asked him to find her a cab.

But in the course of several half-hours spent in this way in Via Belsiana, about dusk, she saw a surprising number of men enter the modest door, and now and then she recognised an acquaintance. She also saw a few come out, who must have gone there early in the afternoon. It was one of these who made the mistake of speaking to her as he met her, half a dozen steps from the threshold. She held her head in the air and quickened her pace, and he did not try to follow her; but she had seen his face clearly, and remembered it afterwards, and thought he must have been a foreigner, for he was fair, with a fresh complexion, and wore grey clothes that had not an Italian look.

She made her annual round of visits before Christmas, as Romans generally do, and, like a sensible woman, she did not merely leave cards everywhere without so much as asking whether people were in; on the contrary, she was conscientious, and tried to find them at home.

It was quite natural that she should call on the Countess of Montalto, but when she did, she was told that Maria was out. This might happen to anybody, of course, so she wrote a line on her card to say that she would come again very soon, and drove away. Two days later she asked for Maria again. Her Excellency was out. This also might happen, with no intention. Three days after that she stopped a third time at the entrance of the palace. The tall porter lifted his black cocked hat with imperturbable serenity and respect. Her Excellency was not at home.

Then Teresa began to suspect something, and took a card with the intention of writing a few words to ask when Maria would see her; and while she was hesitating about the phrase, which the porter would certainly read before sending it upstairs, she sat in her little hired phaeton and unconsciously looked in under the great archway, past the porter, who was waiting at her elbow. Just at that moment she saw a man coming towards her from within, a fair man with a fresh complexion, dressed in grey. He glanced at her and lifted his hat a little, and the porter moved to let him pass, because the carriage was very near the pillars that stood on each side of the entrance. Teresa was not above asking questions of a servant when she was curious.

‘Who was that?’ she inquired, looking down and beginning to write on her card while she spoke. ‘I know his face, but I cannot remember his name.’

‘He is the steward of Montalto, Excellency, Signor Schmidt.’

‘Of course!’ exclaimed Teresa as if she now remembered perfectly.

She finished writing, gave the porter the card, and drove away, meditating on the fact that the steward of Montalto frequented a gambling den in Via Belsiana and spoke to ladies in the street. It also annoyed her to think that Monsieur de Maurienne had doubtless often played at the same table with such people, and had possibly won money from Signor Schmidt. Teresa was more sensitive on some points than on others.

Maria did not answer her written message. On the second day Teresa received a note in a large, stiff handwriting, unfamiliar to her.

Montalto had written himself, in very cold and formal terms, to request her not to put herself to the inconvenience of asking for the Countess again.

Nothing could have been plainer, and Teresa flushed angrily.

‘That is what one gets for defending one’s friends!’ she cried, in a rage.

But she remembered quite well that in her anxiety to defend Maria she had said a number of extremely disagreeable things about Montalto’s mother, which were also quite untrue. Some careful relation had doubtless repeated her observations to him, and now he refused to let her enter his house. She wondered rather flippantly what would happen if everything she had said in her life were repeated to the wrong people, and the idea was so amusing that she laughed at it. But she bore Montalto a lasting grudge from that day, and it pleased her to reflect that his steward spent spare hours in a gambling den and would probably rob him in the end. She would take great care to keep the secret, lest some one should warn him in time, but she would also do her best to meet Maria in some friend’s house, and would tell her what she thought of her behaviour. She felt the humiliation of having had her name sent down to the porter’s lodge as that of a person for whom the Countess was never at home. Such a thing had never happened to her before.

She was Maria’s enemy now, as she had once been her defender, when it had suited her to take the side of frailty, which may bend without being quite broken, against that columnar social virtue which may possibly break but never bends at all. Teresa’s enmity was not likely to be very dangerous, however, for she was, on the whole, a good-natured gossip, and might at any time be in need of a good word for herself in the dangerous game she was playing.

She reflected with rather unnecessary bitterness on her position as a defenceless widow, and felt quite sure that if she were Madame de Maurienne, Montalto would not have the courage to insult her husband by refusing to receive her.