her only amusement--so I gathered
from her chance conversation--being the winning or losing of a
five-franc piece at the tables. One day, when I called at the villa, I
saw by the butler's face that something unusual must have happened. I
learned a few minutes later that Mrs. P---- was dead. The cause of her
death turned out to have been this. Having begun her exploits at the
gambling rooms with winning or losing a five-franc piece occasionally,
she had, unsuspected by anybody, succumbed by slow degrees to the true
gambler's passion. In order to gratify this, everything she could
sell--and it was not much--she had sold. Not many hours ago she had
placed her last louis on the table, and had seen it disappear under the
traction of the croupier's rake. She had nothing left in her bedroom but
the clothes which she had worn yesterday, a hairbrush, and a bottle of
laudanum. The bottle that morning had been found in her hand, empty. The
last incident of my visit to Monte Carlo was her burial. In the mists of
a rainy morning a surpliced English clergyman saw her put out of sight
and mind in a little obscure cemetery. There were only two mourners. I
myself was one; Miss R----, with her fair hair and her black dress, was
the other.

A few days later I left Beaulieu for England by way of the Italian
lakes. I had managed to hire at Nice a great old-fashioned traveling
carriage--a relic of pre-railway days. By way of a parting dissipation I
picked up the R----s at their villa, and took them with me as far as San
Remo. There I joined the train, the R----s going back in the carriage.
Next morning I was at Cadennabia, and Monte Carlo and the system, and
Beaulieu and its Buginvillaeas, were behind me.

CHAPTER XI

"THE OLD ORDER CHANGES"

Intellectual Apathy of Conservatives--A Novel Which Attempts to
Harmonize Socialist Principles with Conservative

In spite of the severance of my connection with the St. Andrews
Boroughs, I found, when I returned to England from Monte Carlo, that my
active connection with politics was not by any means at an end.
Politics, as a mere fight over details, or as a battle between rival
politicians, appealed to me no more than it had done during my
experience of electioneering in Fifeshire; but presently by family
events I was drawn once more into the fray. My cousin, Richard Mallock
of Cockington, had been asked, and had consented, to stand as
Conservative candidate for the Torquay di