ir tea
to keep their darling afloat. Ned's case was familiar to Lily: she had
seen his charming eyes--which had a good deal more poetry in them than
the sonnets--change from surprise to amusement, and from amusement to
anxiety, as he passed under the spell of the terrible god of chance; and
she was afraid of discovering the same symptoms in her own case.

For in the last year she had found that her hostesses expected her to
take a place at the card-table. It was one of the taxes she had to pay
for their prolonged hospitality, and for the dresses and trinkets which
occasionally replenished her insufficient wardrobe. And since she had
played regularly the passion had grown on her. Once or twice of late she
had won a large sum, and instead of keeping it against future losses, had
spent it in dress or jewelry; and the desire to atone for this
imprudence, combined with the increasing exhilaration of the game, drove
her to risk higher stakes at each fresh venture. She tried to excuse
herself on the plea that, in the Trenor set, if one played at all one
must either play high or be set down as priggish or stingy; but she knew
that the gambling passion was upon her, and that in her present
surroundings there was small hope of resisting it.

Tonight the luck had been persistently bad, and the little gold purse
which hung among her trinkets was almost empty when she returned to her
room. She unlocked the wardrobe, and taking out her jewel-case, looked
under the tray for the roll of bills from which she had replenished the
purse before going down to dinner. Only twenty dollars were left: the
discovery was so startling that for a moment she fancied she must have
been robbed. Then she took paper and pencil, and seating herself at the
writing-table, tried to reckon up what she had spent during the day. Her
head was throbbing with fatigue, and she had to go over the figures again
and again; but at last it became clear to her that she had lost three
hundred dollars at cards. She took out her cheque-book to see if her
balance was larger than she remembered, but found she had erred in the
other direction. Then she returned to her calculations; but figure as she
would, she could not conjure back the vanished three hundred dollars. It
was the sum she had set aside to pacify her dress-maker--unless she
should decide to use it as a sop to the jeweller. At any rate, she had so
many uses for it that its very insufficiency had caused her to pl