s a practised player. Time after time she let the
coups pass. The croupiers' invitation to play did not interest her. She
simply toyed with her big gold-chain purse, or fingered her dozen piles
or so of plaques in a manner quite disinterested.

She heard the croupier announce the winning number and saw the rakes at
work dragging in the stakes to swell the bank. But she only smiled, and
now and then shrugged her shoulders.

Whether she won or lost, or whether she did not risk a stake, she simply
smiled and elevated her shoulders, muttering something to herself.

Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo was, truth to tell, a sphinx to the staff
of the Casino. She looked about thirty, but probably she was older.
For five years she had been there each season and gambled heavily with
unvarying success. Always well but quietly dressed, her nationality
was as obscure as her past. To the staff she was always polite, and she
pressed hundred-franc notes into many a palm in the Rooms. But who she
was or what were her antecedents nobody in the Principality of Monaco
could ever tell.

The whole Cote d'Azur from Hyeres to Ventimiglia knew of her. She was
one of the famous characters of Monte Carlo, just as famous, indeed, as
old Mr. Drewett, the Englishman who lost his big fortune at the tables,
and who was pensioned off by the Administration on condition that he
never gamble at the Casino again. For fifteen years he lived in Nice
upon the meagre pittance until suddenly another fortune was left him,
whereupon he promptly paid up the whole of his pension and started at
the tables again. In a month, however, he had lost his second
fortune. Such is gambling in the little country ruled over by Prince
Rouge-et-Noir.

As the two Englishmen slipped past the end table unseen on their way out
into the big atrium with its many columns--the hall in which players
go out to cool themselves, or collect their determination for a final
flutter--Mademoiselle had just won the maximum upon the number four, as
well as the column, and the croupier was in the act of pushing towards
her a big pile of counters each representing a thousand francs.

The eager excited throng around the table looked across at her with
envy. But her handsome countenance was quite expressionless. She simply
thrust the counters into the big gold-chain purse at her side, glanced
at the white-gloved fingers which were soiled by handling the counters,
and then counting out twenty-five, each