Life was not running on oiled wheels at the Villa Bella Vista.

A spirit of discontent, a feeling that they had been lured to the house under false pretences, grew among Lady Dauntrey's visitors and was expressed stealthily, a word here, a word there, and sullen looks behind the backs of host and hostess. Even on the first day disappointment began to wriggle from guest to guest, like a little cold, sharp-nosed snake, leaving its clammy trail wherever it passed.

In the first place the villa, which had been described glowingly by Lady Dauntrey to the Collises and Dodo Wardropp, was not what she had painted it. Indeed, as Dodo remarked to Miss Collis, it was not what any one had painted it, at least within the memory of man. Once it had been a rich gold colour, but many seasons of neglect had tarnished the gold to a freckled brown, which even the flowering creepers that should have cloaked it seemed to dislike. In depression they had shed most of their leaves; and bare serpent-branches, which might be purple with wistaria in the late spring long after everybody had gone to the north, coiled dismally over the fanlike roof of dirty glass that sheltered a blistered front door. Inside, a faint odour of mouldiness hung in the air of the rooms, which had been shut up unoccupied for a long time. The ugly drab curtains in the drawing-room smelled of the moth-powder in which they had been wrapped through the summer heat. The imitation lace drapery underneath them had been torn and not mended. Bits of thick brown paper pasted over the windows during the hot months still stuck to the glass. The furniture was heavy, not old but middle-aged, lacking the charm of antiquity, and in the worst French taste. The pictures were banal; and there was no garden. More painful than all, the house was in the Condamine; and Dodo, when she had spent a few days at "Monte" on her way to England from Australia, had been told that "nobody who was anybody lived down in the Condamine: only the 'cheap people' went there." And Dodo did not consider herself a cheap person. She was paying high to be the guest of a "lady of title": she wanted her money's worth, and soon began to fear that there was doubt of getting it.

Servants had been engaged in advance for Lady Dauntrey by the agent who had let the house. There were too few; and it needed but the first night's dinner to prove that the cook was third rate, though Lady Dauntrey carefully referred to him as the chef. In addition to this person, occasionally seen flitting about in a dingy white cap, there was a man to wait at table and open the door—a man, Dodo said, with the face of a sulky codfish; and a hawk-nosed, hollow-cheeked woman to "do the rooms" and act as maid to the ladies, none of the three having brought a maid of her own. Their hostess had said she could not put up her guests' servants, but they might "count upon a first-rate maid in the house." They reminded each other of this promise, the day after their arrival, and grumbled. Secundina had as much as she could do to keep the rooms in order; and the only other service she was able to give the visitors was to recount gruesome stories of the villa while she made their beds or took a top layer of dust off their dressing-tables. According to her, the Bella Vista was the cheapest furnished house to let in the principality, because years ago a murder had been committed in it. A woman had been killed for the sake of her jewels by the tenants, a husband and wife. They had kept her body in a trunk for days, and had attempted to get out of France with it, but had been arrested on their way to Italy. Nobody who was superstitious would live in the house, and so it was not often let. Secundina did not know where the murder had taken place, but believed it was in the dining-room, and that the trunk had been kept in the cellar.

It was Dodo to whom the tale was told, and she repeated it to Mrs. Collis and her daughter, the three having forgotten their slight differences in making common, secret cause against the Dauntreys, or, rather, against Lady Dauntrey; for they were inclined to like and be sorry for her husband, pitying him because misfortune or weakness had brought him to the pass of marrying such a woman. "You could make a whole macadamized road out of her heart," remarked Mrs. Collis.

"It would serve her right if we all marched out of this loathsome den in a body," said Dodo, emphatically, when they had met to talk things over in the Collises' room. "She's a selfish cat and thinks of nobody but herself. She won't even let the men come near us girls if she can help it, though you and I both know perfectly well, Miss Collis, that she hinted about the most wonderful chances of great marriages, nothing lower than an earl at meanest. Not that you and I need look for husbands. But that isn't the point; for anyhow, she has no business to snap them out of our mouths. Now, she's jealous if Dom Ferdinand or the Marquis de Casablanca so much as looks at one of us. And she's given us the worst rooms, so she can take in other poor deluded creatures and get more money out of them. And there isn't enough to eat. And all the eggs and fish have had a past. And Secundina says there are black beetles as large as chestnuts in the kitchen. Still——"

"Still," echoed Miss Collis, "Monseigneur's awfully interesting, and it's fun being in the same house with him; though I'm afraid he's selfish too, or he wouldn't calmly keep on his front room, when he can't help knowing we're stuffed into back ones without any view. Of course he is a royalty, so perhaps he has his dignity to think of. But I know an American man wouldn't do such a thing, not even if he were a President."

"The Marquis is nice, too," said Mrs. Collis. "Lord Dauntrey tells me his family's one of the oldest in the 'Almanach de Gotha,' whatever that is. And Monseigneur and he are both great friends of the Dauntreys."

"Only of Lord Dauntrey," Dodo corrected her.

"Well, anyhow, they're likely to stay a while in this house, for whatever there is of the best, they get. And they're playing Lord Dauntrey's system with him at the Casino."

"And losing!"

"Yes. But Dom Ferdinand seems to have plenty of money."

"Secundina says the chef told her it was well known that Monseigneur hasn't a sou of his own, but borrows of people who believe in his Cause. Then he comes here and gambles with what he gets. According to the cook, he's a well-known figure at Monte Carlo, and sometimes calls out when he's playing in the Rooms, 'There's my cousin's head on that gold piece. It ought to be mine.'"

"His is a mighty good-looking head, anyhow," remarked Miss Collis thoughtfully. She herself was not rich, but her stepfather, a Chicago merchant, was enormously wealthy, and she was wondering whether, to give her a chance of possible queenhood, David Collis might not open his heart and his purse.

Dodo was at the same time asking herself what would be the smallest sum Dom Ferdinand would consider worth looking at with a wife. Also she contemplated the idea of impressing him with the belief that she was a great heiress, until too late for him to change his mind in honour. But first he must fix his mind upon her. She would have been glad to create distrust of him in the hearts of Lottie Collis and her mother; and while they remained at the Bella Vista in Dom Ferdinand's society Dodo decided not to be frightened away by a few inconveniences. Nor did she wish the story of that long-ago murder to reach his ears. Dom Ferdinand had publicly announced that he was horribly superstitious, and perhaps he would not stay if he knew what had happened in the dining-room. He would think it brought bad luck to live in such a house, even if he could bear the idea of a ghost; for he talked of little else than what one ought to do in order to attract luck.

After a few days at Monte Carlo Lord Dauntrey began to find acquaintances, people he had known long ago in England before he was swallowed up in darkest Africa, or those he had met at hotels since his marriage—hotels chosen by Lady Dauntrey for the purpose of making useful friends. He had a certain wistful, weary charm of manner that was somehow likable and aroused sympathy, especially in women, though it was evident that he made no conscious effort to please.

There was a vague, floating rumour of some old, more than half-forgotten scandal about him: an accident, giving the wrong drug when he was studying medicine as a very young man; a death; a sad story hushed up; a prudent disappearance from Europe, urged by annoyed aristocratic relatives who had little money to speed his departure, but gave what they could; professional failure in South Africa; some gambling-trouble in Johannesburg, and a vanishing again into the unknown. Nevertheless his title was an old one. Men of his race had loomed great in dim historic days, and though during the last two centuries no Dauntrey had done anything notable except lose money, sell land, go bankrupt, figure in divorce cases or card scandals, and marry actresses, they had never in their degeneration lost that charm which, in Charles II's day, had won from a pretty Duchess the nickname of the "darling Dauntreys."

The present viscount was the last and perhaps the least of his race; yet, because of his name and the lingering charm—like the sad perfume of pot-pourri clinging to a broken jar—he would have been given the prodigal's welcome at Monte Carlo (that agreeable pound for lost reputations) but for one drawback. The stumbling block was the woman he had made Lady Dauntrey.

In the permanent English colony on the Riviera, with its jewelled sprinkling of American millionaires and its glittering fringe of foreign notables, there are a few charming women upon whom depends the fate of newcomers. These great ladies turned down their thumbs when with experienced eyes they looked upon Lord Dauntrey's wife, when their trained ears heard her voice, with its curiously foreign, slightly rough accent.

Nobody wanted or intended to turn an uncompromising back upon her. Lord Dauntrey and she could be invited to big entertainments—the mid-season "squashes" which wiped off boring obligations, paid compliments quickly and easily, and pleased the outer circles of acquaintanceship. But for intimate things, little luncheons and little dinners to the elect, she would not "do"; which was a pity—because as a bachelor Lord Dauntrey might have been furbished up and made to do quite well. As things stood, the best that could happen to the pair, if they were found to play bridge well, was to be asked to the bridge parties of the great; while for other entertainments they would have to depend on outsiders to whom a title was a title, no matter how tarnished or how tattered.

As Rose Winter had said to Carleton, "Who isn't Who, if they can play bridge?" But it had been important for Lady Dauntrey's plans not to be received on sufferance. She had meant and expected to be some one in particular. In the South African past of which people here knew nothing, but began to gossip much, it had been her dream to marry a man who could lead her at once to the drawing-room floor of society, and she saw no reason in herself why she should not be a shining light there. She knew that she was handsome, and fascinating to men, and while using her gifts as best she could, always she had burned with an almost fierce desire to make more of them, to be a beauty and a social star, like those women of whom she read in the "society columns" of month-old London papers, women not half as attractive as she. She had felt in herself the qualities necessary for success in a different world from any she had known; and because, during a period when she was a touring actress she had played the parts of great ladies, she had told herself confidently that she would know without any other teaching how great ladies should talk, behave, and dress.

"Who was she?" people asked each other, of course, when she and her husband appeared at Monte Carlo in the beginning of the season, and Lord Dauntrey began quietly, unobtrusively, to remind old acquaintances of his own or of his dead uncle's (the last viscount's) existence. Nobody could answer that question; but "What was she?" seemed simpler of solution as a puzzle, at least in a negative way; for certainly she was not a lady. And one or two Americans who had lived in the South of their own country insisted that she had a "touch of the tar brush." She confessed to having passed some years in South Africa, "in the country a good deal of the time." And something was said by gossips who did not know much, about a first husband who had been "a doctor in some God-forsaken hole." Perhaps that was true, people told each other; and if so, it explained how she and Dauntrey had met; because it was generally understood that he had been, or tried to be, a doctor in South Africa. Thus the story went round that he had been her late husband's assistant, and had married her when she was free.

Even the first ten days in Monte Carlo showed Lady Dauntrey that her brilliant scheme for the season was doomed to failure: and that heart of hers, out of which Mrs. Collis said a whole macadamized road might be made, grew sick with disappointment and anxiety.

She had married Dauntrey—almost forced him to marry her, in fact, by fanning the dying embers of his chivalry—because she expected through him to realize her ambitions. Under this motive lay another—an almost savage love, not unlike the love for an Apache of the female of his kind. Only, Dauntrey was not an Apache at heart, and Eve Ruthven was. Eve, of course, was not her real name. She had been Emma Cotton until she went on the stage twenty years ago, at sixteen; but she was the type of woman who admires and takes the name of Eve. And Mrs. Ruthven she had been as wife and widow after the theatrical career had been abandoned in disaster. Something in her nature would have yearned toward Dauntrey if he had had nothing to recommend him to her ambition; but she would have resisted her own inclination for a penniless man without a title.

What money there was between them had been saved in one way or other by her; but, as Dodo Wardropp surmised, there was far less than Mrs. Ruthven had persuaded Lord Dauntrey to believe. At first she had worked upon the overmastering passion of his nature, where most other loves and desires were burnt out or broken down: the passion for gambling. He had told her about the roulette system which he had invented, a wonderful system, in practising which with a roulette watch or a toy wheel, he had managed to get through dreadful years of banishment, without dying of boredom. She had encouraged him to hope that with her money they would have enough capital to play the system successfully at Monte Carlo, and win fortune in a way which for long had been the dream of his life, as hers had been to become a personage in "real society."

With five thousand pounds, Lord Dauntrey was confident that he could win through the worst possible slide the system was likely to experience, playing with louis stakes. Mrs. Ruthven mentioned that she had eight thousand pounds. After he had asked her to marry him, and she had said yes, and told everybody she knew, about the engagement—including newspaper men in Johannesburg—Dauntrey discovered that the figure she had mentioned was in hundreds, not thousands. But she sobbed out a passionate confession, saying she had lied because she loved him: and they could still go to Monte Carlo, with a plan she had, and try the system with five-franc pieces instead of louis.

It was a long time since any one had loved Dauntrey. He was lonely, and hated to hurt a woman. Besides, five-franc pieces were better than nothing, and he was sick to death of South Africa.

They had got through the spring and summer in England partly on their wits, partly through impressing landlords and travelling nonentities with their social importance, and partly through their successes at bridge. For they both played bridge extremely well, too well, it had once or twice been said of Lord Dauntrey in South Africa.

Lady Dauntrey's "plan" was to get together as many paying guests as possible, enlist their interest in the "system," or, if they could not be persuaded into that, to earn for herself something even better than board-money, by introducing rich girls to men of title. She had not doubted her opportunities for thrusting her female pigeons into society, or of getting hold of young foreign aristocrats, perhaps even Englishmen, who were "out for dollars," as her girls would be out for dukes—or the next best thing after dukes. And she had begun well.

The house she had secured was cheap; and she brought with her from England three women who would alone pay more than enough to keep it up. Her husband's friend, Dom Ferdinand de Trevanna, and his faithful follower, the Marquis de Casablanca, had fulfilled a promise to meet them at Monte Carlo on the day after their arrival at the villa. Several other guests were expected—the young widow of a rich stockbroker; two Jewish heiresses who still called themselves girls; an elderly, impecunious English earl; an Austrian count who had failed to find a wife in England, and a naval lieutenant who was heir to an impoverished baronetcy: a set of people sure to be congenial, because each wanted something which another could give. Everything ought to have been satisfactory, even from Dauntrey's point of view, for he had interested all the men in his system, and what money they could spare would be put into it; he would play for the "syndicate"; or if the men preferred gambling themselves, they must give him something for the system which he was prepared to teach.

When she arrived at Monte Carlo on a beautiful day of sunshine, which seemed a good omen, Eve Dauntrey believed that at last luck had turned for her. She thought that the thing she had longed for, year after year, was coming at last; and she was proud of the plan she had made, proud of the way in which she had worked it out. But the moment she entered the villa in the Condamine, her spirits were damped almost as if, by some monkey-trick, a jug of cold water had been upset on her head as the door opened to let her in. She felt the same depression fall upon the minds of the others, as shadows can be seen to move and grow long at sunset. She knew that the Collises and Dodo Wardropp were going to be dissatisfied, and that they would talk against the house and their accommodation in it, behind her back, saying that she had deliberately deceived them.

Still, there were Dom Ferdinand and Casablanca. There was no deceit where they were concerned. They wanted to meet girls with money, and Dodo and Lottie wanted to meet men of title. There ought to be no danger that any members of this party would leave solely because the cooking was poor and the rooms badly furnished; and it was really Eve's wish to throw the four together, so that they need not miss certain things which lacked in her promised programme. But she had counted without herself. It was not in her to surrender any men who might be near, to other women, even when surrendering them would be to her advantage. In her heart she despised Lottie Collis and Dodo Wardropp, and she had to try her own weapons against theirs. She could not help this, and did it almost unconsciously.

Throughout her whole life since she was fifteen she had lived by and sometimes fallen by the fascination she had for men; not all men, but many, and most of those whose type appealed to her. She could never resist testing its power, even now when she loved the man she had married, and would ruthlessly have sacrificed any other for him. She tried it upon Dom Ferdinand and the Marquis de Casablanca. They struggled, because they wished to make an impression upon the two girls in the house; but they could not hold out against the allurement of the primitive woman in Lady Dauntrey, and though they paid the girls compliments and went about with them docilely, they looked at Eve. And the girls saw not only the looks, but the weapons which Lady Dauntrey used to win the men for herself, when she ought to have been furthering her guests' interests. They began to hate her, and soon realized that she would not be able to introduce them to the "best set" at Monte Carlo, as she had promised. Still they stayed on, hoping a little, for other people were expected to join the house party, and there was a chance yet of something better. Besides, they found a small and bitter pleasure in seeing the disappointment and humiliation of the woman who had been so sure of herself, and had, by the force of her own strong personality, made them sure of her. Dodo and the Collises, travelling out of their own country for the first time, had not—as they acknowledged to each other now—"known the difference in foreigners." It was only by the light in other women's eyes—women of good birth and breeding—that they began to see Lady Dauntrey as she was, common, bold, not a lady, one whom ladies would not care to receive.

Dodo also was common, and knew herself to be "nobody" at home, but she had thought that she might "go down in England," if she could have the right introductions. Now she saw that her money was being wasted at the start; for though the Dauntreys attracted a certain set round them, instinctively she, as well as the Collises, felt that it was not the right set.

Even when, after ten days of Monte Carlo, the Villa Bella Vista was full of the Dauntreys' paying guests, a cold sense of insecurity and trouble to come, which would be worse by and by than the bitter disappointment of the present, lay heavy upon Eve's heart. Her mÉnage was uncomfortable, and people were threatening to go. Every day nearly she had a "scene" with some one, a guest or a servant, or both. Mrs. Collis had burst into tears at a luncheon in honour of a rich Jewish money-lender, because she thought herself insulted. She had been given a kitchen dish-towel instead of a napkin, and had spoiled the party by complaining of it. The stupid creature! As if some one were not obliged to put up with the thing, since there were not enough napkins to go round for so many! Lady Dauntrey had explained that she could not take the dish-towel herself, as Monseigneur was on her right hand, Mr. Holbein on her left. But even the fact that Lord Dauntrey contented himself with a dust cloth did not appease Mrs. Collis, who said it was only the last feather on the top of other grievances. And Dodo was furious because, whenever Lady Dauntrey entertained, the servants were so busy that she had to make her own bed, or see it lie tumbled just as she had got out of it, until evening. Eve's violent temper had got the better of her then, and she had flung her true opinion of Miss Wardropp into the pretty painted face. "Persons who've never had anything decent at home always complain more than any one else in other people's houses," she had said; and Dodo had retorted with compliments of the same kind.

Miss Wardropp often wondered if Lady Dauntrey knew the history of the Villa Bella Vista. She did know, the agent having felt obliged to confess, lest later she might hear the story and try to get out of her bargain on the strength of it. But he had eloquently explained that if there were no drawback the house—being a large one with many rooms—would have commanded twice the price at which he could offer it to her ladyship. He had added that the murder, committed long ago, had been almost forgotten by every one except old inhabitants; and as the villa had been occupied by several tenants since its evil days, and thoroughly redecorated, it need no longer have disagreeable associations even for the most sensitive minds.

Lady Dauntrey's mind was not sensitive. She had hoped that her guests would not hear the tale, and she had thought that she would not care herself. Perhaps she would not have cared, if everything had gone as well with her and her husband as they had expected, for then she would have been cheerful, and could have laughed at superstition. But when the people she wanted to know would not know her, when Dauntrey's system did not work as it had worked on the toy roulette, when the servants stole, or left without notice, and when the guests quarrelled and complained, she began to feel that there was a curse upon the house. She fancied that, if she had not taken it, but had run larger risks and chosen a more expensive villa, perhaps things would have been better.

In spite of herself she thought a great deal about the man and the woman who had done the murder. From the agent she had heard no details, and though the case had made a great sensation at the time it happened, years ago, she had been far away in South Africa, and had not given much attention to it. Some sly hints of Secundina's, however, had shown her that the servants knew, and she had not been able to resist asking questions. Afterward she could not put out of her head Secundina's description of the dreadful couple.

The man had been of good birth, the woman bourgeoise, but clever. They had gambled and made money, eventually losing it again, and all their capital besides. Then they had grown desperate, at their wits' end, and they had killed a woman who trusted and thought of them as her friends. At night, when Eve lay awake worrying, as she often did—especially when Dauntrey had been losing—she seemed to see the two haggard faces staring at her hopelessly, growing and taking shape in the darkness. Worse than all, she seemed to understand something in their eyes which they wished to make her understand. She wondered if, by any chance, the room where she and her husband slept had been theirs, and if between these walls they had talked over the murder before committing it. She imagined how they had felt, how they had hated and rebelled against the idea at first, then accepted it as the one thing left to do. The story was that the woman had persuaded the man to consent, though he had refused at first.

One day, after a worse quarrel than any that had gone before, Mrs. Collis left with Lottie, packing up in a hurry, and driving off to a hotel. This gave Lady Dauntrey an empty room; and already Dodo had twice vowed that she too would go. Now, in all probability the Collises would persuade her to join them; and perhaps an epidemic of departure would sweep through the villa. Lord Dauntrey had suffered a serious setback; and all the money received from the guests was needed to retrieve this accident. Dom Ferdinand had lost so much that he could not pay at all until a further remittance came to him; and as odd stories of the household had leaked out through dissatisfied servants, several tradesmen had begun to make themselves objectionable. Strangers are not trusted in the shops at Monte Carlo, and the butcher threatened to send no more meat to the Bella Vista unless he were paid what was owing.

This happened when the Dauntreys had been in their villa three weeks; and that same afternoon at the Casino Lady Dauntrey spoke to Mary Grant. It was then two days before Christmas.

Often she had looked at Mary and felt inclined to speak, but always something had happened to prevent, or else Dodo or the Collises had been near, and she had known that they would say to each other, "Look at the woman making up to that girl now because she's winning such a lot. Any one who's got money is good enough for her." But this time the conversation came about easily, as though it were meant to be. She was watching Mary's play, standing behind the next chair. Suddenly a man occupying the chair got up and went away from the table. Instantly Lady Dauntrey dropped into the vacant place, as if she had been waiting for it.

She did not really wish to play, though she liked gambling, for she had been unlucky in the small game she had attempted, and had grown cautious, anxious to keep what she had. But on a crowded night it is almost obligatory to play if one has annexed a chair which many people would like to have. Eve reluctantly took out two louis, the only coins in her imitation gold bag. She was not near a croupier, and having seen already that a few five-franc pieces lay among her neighbour's gold and notes, she asked Mary with a pleasant smile if she would mind changing a louis for her. "I'm not lucky, like you," she said, "so I'm afraid to play with gold."

Mary pushed four five-franc pieces along the table, and would have been only too glad not to accept the gold in exchange, but of course she could not make a present of money to Lady Dauntrey. "I shall be delighted," she said.

"You're sure you're not wanting your silver?" Eve inquired.

"Oh, no, thank you. I sometimes put five francs on zero en plein to protect half a stake on a simple chance," Mary explained, now thoroughly conversant with every intricacy of the game that had been so kind to her. "But zero's been up three times in half an hour, so I don't think I shall bother with it again for a while. And, anyhow, I'm not playing for a few minutes. Sometimes I feel as if I must wait for an inspiration."

"I wish I ever had one!" sighed Lady Dauntrey, hesitating over one of her big silver coins. "Do tell me where to put this. You're so wonderful, you might bring even me a stroke of luck."

"But I should be so distressed if I made you lose," Mary said, as gravely as if the five-franc piece in question had been a mille note. "But—well—if it were mine, I rather think I should try ten. I've no inspiration for myself this time; but I seem to see ten floating in the air around you, and that's the way my inspirations come. I see numbers or colours, and then I play on them."

"I'll try it!" Eve exclaimed. "But will you put the money on for me? I want all your luck, and none of my own."

Mary pushed the five-franc piece on to the number 10, using a rake of her own which Dick Carleton had given her. It was a glorified rake, which he had ordered specially for her, made of ebony with the initials "M. G." set into it in little sapphires, her favourite stones.

Ten came up, and Lady Dauntrey was enchanted. She even felt an impulse of gratitude, and a superstitious conviction that this girl would be for her a bringer of good fortune.

"I've so often watched your play, and wanted to tell you how much I admired it," she said, "but I never quite had the courage."

Lady Dauntrey did not look like a woman who would lack courage for anything she wished to do, but Mary saw no reason to disbelieve her word, and indeed did not judge or criticise at all, except by instinct; and people had only to look sad or complain of their ill luck to arouse a sympathy stronger than any instinct against them.

"I think it's very nice of you to speak," she replied, politely. Both murmured in subdued tones, in order not to annoy other players.

"I recognized you, of course, the first time I saw you in the Casino," Lady Dauntrey went on, "as the lovely girl who came south in the train with us. We've all been longing to know you."

This was untrue. Anxious to propitiate Society as far as possible, Eve had avoided recognizing Mary, who might be looked upon as a doubtful person—a young girl, always strikingly dressed, living alone at a fashionable and gay hotel, playing high at the Casino, and picking up odd acquaintances. But now Lady Dauntrey was abandoning all hope that Society might let her pass over its threshold, and she was willing to defy it for the sake of money. This girl was at least a lady, which Dodo was not, nor was Mrs. Ernstein, the stockbroker's widow. Eve thought it would be a good thing if Miss Grant could be persuaded to come and stay at the Villa Bella Vista in the room left vacant by the Collises. Mary was rather flattered, but she now had an inspiration to play, and did not want to go on talking. "I think ten will come up again, or else eleven," she said, with the misty look in her eyes which was always there at the Casino, or when her thoughts were intent on gambling. "I shall play the two numbers À cheval."

She put on a maximum, Lady Dauntrey hastily placing a five-franc piece, not on the cheval, but more timidly on the six numbers of which ten and eleven were two. Mary lost and Eve won, for thirteen came up. The same thing happened several times in succession. If Mary chose a number, Lady Dauntrey included it in a transversale simple, or took the dozen in which it was. Mary invariably lost, while she won. It was as if she gave Mary bad luck, while Mary brought her good fortune, for never had Mary so often lost, never had Eve won so often in succession.

At last all the money which Mary had brought with her was exhausted, and Lady Dauntrey, who had raked in more than twenty louis, offered laughingly to lend her something to go on with. But Mary thanked her and refused, in spite of the tradition of the tables that borrowed money brings back good luck.

"I'm rather tired, and my head aches a little," she said. "I think I'll go home."

Eve rose also. "You call the HÔtel de Paris 'home?'" she asked.

"I begin to feel quite at home," Mary answered. "I've been there nearly three weeks, and it seems longer."

They walked together out of the bright room of the large decorative picture called jestingly "The Three Disgraces," on through the Salle Schmidt, and so to the atrium. "If you don't mind," said Lady Dauntrey, "I'll go with you as far as your hotel. There's a hat in a shop round the corner I've been dying for. Now, thanks to the luck you've brought me, I shall treat myself to it, as a kind of Christmas present. You know, day after to-morrow will be Christmas. Surely you'll be rather lonely in your 'home' then, or have you friends who are going to take you away for the day?"

"No," Mary replied, as they went down the steps of the Casino. "No one has mentioned Christmas. I suppose people don't think as much about celebrating Christmas here, where it's almost like summer. Besides, I have very few friends."

"Haven't you made a good many acquaintances?"

"Not many. Four or five. One lady has called—I think she is the wife of the chaplain of the Church of England—but I was out, and I haven't returned her visit yet. One seems to have so little time here! And the curÉ of Roquebrune, the village on the hill, has been—twice. I was out both times. I'm always out, I'm afraid. But that reminds me, I must send him a Christmas present for his church."

"I should be delighted if you'd dine with us on Christmas night," said Lady Dauntrey, cordially. "Do! At eight o'clock. We have such a merry party with us—all young, or if not young they feel so, which is the true Christmas spirit."

"You're very kind——" Mary began; but suspecting hesitation, Lady Dauntrey broke in. "That's settled, then. I'm so pleased! And would you care to go to a dance on Christmas eve?—a rather wonderful dance it will be, on board a big yacht in the harbour. You must have noticed her—White Lady her name is—and she belongs to Mr. Samuel Holbein, the South African millionaire. You've heard of him, of course. His wife and daughter are on board, and they've begged me to bring as many girls to the dance as I can, for there'll be a lot of men. You know there are heaps more young men about here than there are girls—so unusual except at Monte Carlo."

"A dance on a yacht!" Mary echoed. The idea tempted her, though she hardly felt friendly enough yet with Lady Dauntrey to accept two invitations from her at once. "It sounds interesting."

"It will be. Do say yes. I shall love to chaperon you."

They were at the steps of the HÔtel de Paris.

"Then I say 'yes,'" answered Mary, "and thank you!"

In a few minutes it was all arranged. And Lady Dauntrey bade Miss Grant goodbye, gayly, calling her a "mascotte." She turned the corner as if to go to the shop of the hats. But there was no hat there which she particularly wanted. She had merely sought an excuse to walk as far as the HÔtel de Paris with Mary. When the girl had disappeared behind the glass doors, Eve went back quickly to the Casino, where her husband was playing. She could not bear to be long away from him when he was there. It was agony not to know whether he had lost or won.

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