senses, chasing the blood from my face, the
hope from my heart. Ruined! Ruined! The faces around me grew
blurred and misty, the room and all my surrounding seemed to fade
further and yet further away, leaving me face to face with the
consequences of my folly. Scarce knowing what I did, I turned to
look at Tom, and saw that his face was white and set. As I did so
the musical voice beside me murmured--

"The game is waiting: are you going to stake this time?"

I stammered out a negative.

"What? already tired? A faint heart should not go with such a face,"
and again she swept the pointer round.

"Is it," she whispered in my ear, "is it that you cannot?"

"It is."

"Ah, it is hard with half-a-sovereign to break the bank. But see,
have you nothing--nothing? For I feel as if my luck were going to
leave me."

"Nothing," I answered, "nothing in the world."

"Poor boy!"

Her voice was tender and sympathetic, but in her eyes there glanced
not the faintest spark of mercy. I sat for a moment stunned and
helpless, and then she resumed.

"Can I lend to you?"

"No, for I have no chance of repaying. This was my all, and it has
gone. I have not one penny left in the world."

"Poor boy!"

"I thank you. I could not expect you to pity me, but--"

"Ah, but you are wrong. I pity you: I pity you all. Fools, fools, I
call you all, and yet I make my living out of you. So you cannot
play," she added, as she set the game going once again. "What will
you do?"

"Go, first of all."

"And after?"

I shrugged my shoulders.

"No, do not go yet. Sit beside me for a while and watch: it is only
Fortune that makes me your enemy. I would willingly have lost to
you."

She looked so curious, sitting there with her yellow face, her
wrinkles and her innumerable diamonds, that I could only sit and
stare.

"I have seen many a desperate boy," continued this extraordinary
woman, "sitting beside me in that very chair. Ah, many a young life
have I murdered in this way. I am old, you see, very old; older even
than you could guess, but I triumph over youth none the less.
Sometimes I feel as if I fed on the young lives of others."

She delivered these confidences without a change in her emotionless
face, and still I stared fascinated.

"Ah, yes, they sit here for a moment, and then they go--who knows
where? You will be going presently, and then I shall lose you for
ever, without a thought of what happens to you. Mo