ty that she should be
cursed with a gambler for a husband.

As they went back into the Casino they could hear the people round them
talking of the Comte de Virieu, and of the high play that had gone on at
the club that evening.

"No, he is winning now," they heard someone say. And Madame Wachner
looked anxious. If Count Paul were winning, then her Fritz must be
losing.

And alas! her fears were justified. When they got up into the Baccarat
Room they found L'Ami Fritz standing apart from the tables, his hands in
his pockets, staring abstractedly out of a dark window on to the lake.

"Well?" cried Madame Wachner sharply, "Well, Fritz?"

"I have had no luck!" he shook his head angrily. "It is all the fault of
that cursed system! If I had only begun at the right, the propitious
moment--as I should have done if you had not worried me and asked me to
go away--I should probably have made a great deal of money," he looked at
her disconsolately, deprecatingly.

Chester also looked at Madame Wachner. He admired the wife's
self-restraint. Her red face got a little redder. That was all.

"It cannot be helped," she said a trifle coldly, and in French. "I knew
how it would be, so I am not disappointed. Have you anything left? Have
you got the five louis I gave you at the beginning of the evening?"

Monsieur Wachner shook his head gloomily.

"Well then, it is about time we went home." She turned and led the way
out.

CHAPTER XXIII

As Sylvia went slowly and wearily up to her room a sudden horror of
Lacville swept over her excited brain.

For the first time since she had been in the Villa du Lac, she locked the
door of her bed room and sat down in the darkness.

She was overwhelmed with feelings of humiliation and pain. She told
herself with bitter self-scorn that Paul de Virieu cared nothing for her.
If he had cared ever so little he surely would never have done what he
had done to-night?

But such thoughts were futile, and soon she rose and turned on the
electric light. Then she sat down at a little writing-table which had
been thoughtfully provided for her by M. Polperro, and hurriedly, with
feverish eagerness, wrote a note.

Dear Count de Virieu--

I am very tired to-night, and I do not feel as if I should be well
enough to ride to-morrow.--Yours sincerely,

Sylvia Bailey.

That was all, but it was enough. Hitherto she had evidently been--hateful
thought--what the matrons of Market Dalling ca