a few
months they are married, and he takes her to his home in Rouen. There he
listens to her entreaties, and resigns his commission.

"This was five years ago. To-day he is a broken-down man, starving on his
pension; a poor devil about the streets, instead of a general commanding a
department; and all for love of her. Some, of course, said it was the
sabre-cut; some that he could no longer hold his command, he was so badly
slashed. But it is as I tell you. You can see him here any day, sitting
under the trees, playing with the child, or along the lake front, leaning
on her arm."

Here the croupier rose from the bench, looked critically over his case of
cigarettes, selected one carefully, and began buttoning his coat as if to
go.

By this time I had determined to know the end. I felt that he had told me
the truth as far as he had gone; but I felt, also, that he had stopped at
the most critical point of her career. I saw, too, that he was familiar
with its details.

"Go on, please. Here, try a cigar." My interest in my heroine had even
made me courteous. My aversion to him, too, was wearing off. Perhaps,
after all, croupiers were no worse than other people. "Now, one thing
more. Why was she in your gambling-house?"

He lighted the cigar, touched his hat with his forefinger, and again
seated himself.

"Well, then, monsieur, as you will. I always trust you Americans. When you
lose, you pay; when you win, you keep your mouths shut. Besides,"--this
was spoken more to himself,--"you have never seen him, and never will. Le
voila. One night,--this only a year ago, remember,--in one of the gardens
at Baden, a hand touched the baroness's shoulder.

"It was _Frontignac's_.

"The body under the brush-heap had been that of another man dressed in
Frontignac's clothes. The bullet-hole in his head was made by a ball from
Frontignac's pistol. Since then he had been hiding in exile.

"He threatened exposure. She pleaded for her boy and her crippled husband.
She could, of course, have handed him over to the nearest gendarme; but
that meant arrest, and arrest meant exposure. At their home in Vienna, let
me tell you, baccarat had been played nightly as a pastime for their
guests. So great was her luck that 'As lucky as the Baronne Frontignac'
was a byword. Frontignac's price was this: she must take his fifty louis
and play that stake at the Casino that night; when she brought him ten
thousand francs he would vanish.

"That nig