t cetera, as per foregoing bald
description, and as per what can, by imaginative effort, be pictured
from the Pujolic hyperbole, by which I, the unimportant narrator of
these chronicles, was dazzled and overwhelmed.

"I'm afraid I don't think of the croupier at all," said Betty.

"Do you think of no one who brings you good fortune?" asked Aristide. He
threw the _Matin_ on the grass, and, doubling himself up in his chair
regarded her earnestly. "Last night you put five louis into my bank----"

"And I won forty. I could have hugged you."

"Why didn't you? Ah!" His arms spread wide and high. "What I have lost!"

"Betty!" cried Mrs. Errington.

"Alas, Madame," said Aristide, "that is the despair of our artificial
civilization. It prohibits so much spontaneous expression of emotion."

"You'll forgive me, Monsieur Pujol," said Mrs. Errington dryly, "but I
think our artificial civilization has its advantages."

"If you will forgive me, in your turn," said Aristide, "I see a doubtful
one advancing."

A man approached the group and with profuse gestures took off a straw
hat which he thrust under his right arm, exposing an amazingly flat head
on which the closely cropped hair stood brush-fashion upright. He had an
insignificant pale face to which a specious individuality was given by a
moustache with ends waxed up to the eyes and by a monocle with a
tortoise shell rim. He was dressed (his valet had misjudged things--and
valets like the rest of us are fallible) in what was yesterday a fairly
white flannel suit.

"Madame--Mademoiselle." He shook hands with charming grace. "Monsieur."
He bowed stiffly. Aristide doffed his Panama hat with adequate ceremony.
"May I be permitted to join you?"

"With pleasure, Monsieur de Lussigny," said Mrs. Errington.

Monsieur de Lussigny brought up a chair and sat down.

"What time did you get to bed, last night?" asked Betty Errington. She
spoke excellently pure French, and so did her mother.

"Soon after we parted, mademoiselle, quite early for me but late for
you. And you look this morning as if you had gone to bed at sundown and
got up at dawn."

Miss Betty's glance responsive to the compliment filled Aristide with
wrath. What right had the Comte de Lussigny, a fellow who consorted with
Brazilian Rastaquoueres and perfumed Levantine nondescripts, to win such
a glance from Betty Errington?

"If Mademoiselle can look so fresh," said he, "in the artificial
atmosphere of Aix, what