rveillance,
does not know," she went on in a whisper. "He is a friend of mine, and I
asked him one day. She came from Paris, he told me. She may be American,
she may be Belgian, or she may be English. She speaks English and French
so well that nobody can tell her true nationality."

"And she makes money at the tables," said the American woman in the
well-cut coat and skirt and small hat. She came from Chelsea, Mass., and
it was her first visit to what her pious father had always referred to
as the plague spot of Europe.

"Money!" exclaimed the old woman. "Money! _Dieu!_ She has losses, it is
true, but oh!--what she wins! I only wish I had ten per cent of it. I
should then be rich. Mine is a poor game, madame--waiting for someone to
buy my seat instead of standing the whole afternoon. You see, there is
only one row of chairs all around. So if a smart woman wants to play,
some man always buys her a chair--and that is how I live. Ah! madame,
life is a great game here in the Principality."

Meanwhile young Hugh Henfrey, who had travelled from London to the
Riviera and identified the mysterious mademoiselle, had passed with
his friend, Walter Brock, through the atrium and out into the afternoon
sunshine.

As they turned upon the broad gravelled terrace in front of the great
white facade of the Casino amid the palms, the giant geraniums and
mimosa, the sapphire Mediterranean stretched before them. Below, beyond
the railway line which is the one blemish to the picturesque scene,
out upon the point in the sea the constant pop-pop showed that the
tir-aux-pigeons was in progress; while up and down the terrace, enjoying
the quiet silence of the warm winter sunshine with the blue hills of
the Italian coast to the left, strolled a gay, irresponsible crowd--the
cosmopolitans of the world: politicians, financiers, merchants, princes,
authors, and artists--the crowd which puts off its morals as easily as
it discards its fur coats and its silk hats, and which lives only for
gaiety and without thought of the morrow.

"Let's sit down," suggested Hugh wearily. "I'm sure that she's the same
woman--absolutely certain!"

"You are quite confident you have made no mistake--eh?"

"Quite, my dear Walter. I'd know that woman among ten thousand. I only
know that her surname is Ferad. Her Christian name I do not know."

"And you suspect that she knows the secret of your father's death?"

"I'm confident that she does," replied the good-look