n return. He glanced at me. Our eyes met, but we neither of us
acknowledged the other. It is the rule with men of our class. We are
always strangers, except when it is to the interests of either party
to appear friends.

But what did this nod to Pierrette mean? How could she be acquainted
with Henri Regnier?

"Do you know that man?" I asked her, as presently we moved away from the
table.

"What man?" she inquired, her eyes opening widely in assumed ignorance.

"I thought you nodded recognition to a man across the table," I
remarked, disappointed at her attempt to deceive me.

"No," she replied; "I didn't recognise anyone. You were mistaken. He
perhaps nodded to somebody else."

This reply of hers increased the mystery. Had she deceived me when she
told me that she was the daughter of old Dumont the jeweller? If so,
then I had sent Bindo back to London on a wild goose-chase.

We passed back into the roulette rooms, and for quite a long time she
stood at the first table at the left of the entrance, watching the game
intently.

A man I knew passed, and I crossed to chat with him. In ten minutes or
so I returned to her side, and as I did so she bent and took from the
end of the croupier's rake three one-thousand-franc notes, while all
eyes at the table were fixed upon her.

One of the notes she tossed upon the "rouge," and the other two she
crushed into her pocket.

"What!" I gasped, "are you playing? And with such stakes?"

"Why not?" she laughed, perfectly cool, and watching the ball, which
had already begun to spin.

With a final click it fell into one of the red squares, and two notes
were handed to her.

The one she had won she passed across to the "noir," and there won
again, and again a second time, until people at the table began to
follow her lead. Gamblers are always superstitious when they see a young
girl playing. It is amazing and curious how often youth will win where
middle-age will lose.

Five times in succession she played upon the colours with a thousand
francs each time, and won on each occasion.

I tried to remonstrate, and urged her to leave with her winnings; but
her cheeks were flushed, and she was now excited. One of the notes she
exchanged with the croupier for nine hundreds, and five louis. The
latter she distributed _a cheval_, with one _en plein_ on the number
eighteen.

It won. She left her stake on the table, and again the same number
turned up. Three louis placed on zero