ns of the
players, and might lead to our being ejected.

"How provoking!" she retorted. "Then the young man is done for! I
suppose he WISHES to be ruined. Yet I could not bear to see him have to
return it all. What a fool the fellow is!" and the old lady turned
sharply away.

On the left, among the players at the other half of the table, a young
lady was playing, with, beside her, a dwarf. Who the dwarf may have
been--whether a relative or a person whom she took with her to act as a
foil--I do not know; but I had noticed her there on previous occasions,
since, everyday, she entered the Casino at one o'clock precisely, and
departed at two--thus playing for exactly one hour. Being well-known to
the attendants, she always had a seat provided for her; and, taking
some gold and a few thousand-franc notes out of her pocket--would begin
quietly, coldly, and after much calculation, to stake, and mark down
the figures in pencil on a paper, as though striving to work out a
system according to which, at given moments, the odds might group
themselves. Always she staked large coins, and either lost or won one,
two, or three thousand francs a day, but not more; after which she
would depart. The Grandmother took a long look at her.

"THAT woman is not losing," she said. "To whom does she belong? Do you
know her? Who is she?"

"She is, I believe, a Frenchwoman," I replied.

"Ah! A bird of passage, evidently. Besides, I can see that she has her
shoes polished. Now, explain to me the meaning of each round in the
game, and the way in which one ought to stake."

Upon this I set myself to explain the meaning of all the
combinations--of "rouge et noir," of "pair et impair," of "manque et
passe," with, lastly, the different values in the system of numbers.
The Grandmother listened attentively, took notes, put questions in
various forms, and laid the whole thing to heart. Indeed, since an
example of each system of stakes kept constantly occurring, a great
deal of information could be assimilated with ease and celerity. The
Grandmother was vastly pleased.

"But what is zero?" she inquired. "Just now I heard the flaxen-haired
croupier call out 'zero!' And why does he keep raking in all the money
that is on the table? To think that he should grab the whole pile for
himself! What does zero mean?"

"Zero is what the bank takes for itself. If the wheel stops at that
figure, everything lying on the table becomes the absolute property of
th