nd very dependent upon her, with no grain of jealousy in
his nature. So, when the English swells, of which there were many at
Monte Carlo, flocked around her, attracted by her fresh young beauty and
the girlish simplicity of her manners, she readily encouraged them; not
because she cared particularly for their admiration, but because she
meant to use them for her own purpose, and make them subservient to her
interests.

CHAPTER III.

AT MONTE CARLO.

Reader, have you ever been to Monte Carlo, that loveliest spot in all
the world, where nature and art have done so much; where the summer
rains fall so softly, and the winter sun shines so brightly, and where
the blue of the autumnal sky is only equaled by the blue of the
Mediterranean sea, whose waves kiss the beautiful shore and cool the
perfumed air? If you have been there you do not need a description of
the place, or of the mass of human beings, who daily press up the hill
from the station, or, swarming from those grand hotels, hurry toward one
common center, the tall Casino, whose gilded domes can he seen from
afar, and whose interior, though, so beautiful to look upon, is, as Miss
Betsey McPherson would express it, the very gate of hell. Perhaps, like
the writer of this story, you have stood by the long tables, and watched
the people seated there; the white-haired, watery-eyed old men, whose
trembling hands can scarcely hold the gold they put down with such
feverish eagerness; the men of middle age, whom experience has taught to
play cautiously, and stop just before the tide of success turns against
them; the young men, who, with the perspiration standing thickly about
their pale lips, and a strange glitter in their feverish eyes as they
see hundreds swept away, still play recklessly, desperately, until all
is lost, and they leave the accursed spot, hopelessly ruined, sometimes
seeking forgetfulness in death, with only the silent stars looking down
upon them and the restless sea moaning in their ears, lost, lost! There
are women too, at Monte Carlo, more, I verily believe than men; old
women, who sit from the hour of noon to the hour of midnight; women,
with their life's history written on their wrinkled, wicked faces;
women, who laugh hysterically when all they have is lost, and then
borrow of their friends to try their luck again; women, who go from
table to table with their long bags upon their arms, and who only risk
five or ten francs at a time, and s