owed with reserved courtesy in
reply, and then, as Lord Cameron accosted an acquaintance who was
approached, she excused herself and turned to greet her friend, leaving
Mrs. Mencke boiling with rage over their distant reception, and bitterly
disappointed at not having secured an invitation even to call upon them.

She felt humiliated as well as angry, and too wrought up to longer enjoy
the gayeties of the evening, she retired at an early hour from the
reception.

The unhappy woman had other causes, aside from the failure of her
matrimonial schemes and the contempt of the Camerons, for anxiety and
unhappiness.

Her husband, during the last few months, while visiting various resorts,
had developed an alarming taste for gambling, and had, to her knowledge,
lost large sums of money; while he seemed perfectly reckless in his
expenditure, and she felt sure, though she did not yet dream the worst,
that their own as well as Violet's fortune was fast melting away.

Deep and frequent potations at the cup, too, were showing their effect
upon him; he was growing more gross and coarse, and his temper suffered
in proportion with the continuous nervous excitement under which he was
laboring.

All this must have an end sooner or later, she knew, but she was not
prepared to have it come so soon as it did.

Four weeks after her meeting with the Camerons the man returned to her,
late one night, from a terrible orgie. His face was bloated and crimson
from drink; his eyes wild and blood-shot, his hair disheveled, and his
clothing soiled and disordered.

Coming rudely into his wife's presence, he cried out with a shocking
oath:

"It's all gone!--hic--every--dollar we had in the world, and, Belle,
we're--hic--beggars!"

"What do you mean, Will?" his wife demanded, with a sinking heart and
white face.

"Are you deaf?" he bawled, with another oath. "We're--hic--beggars, I
tell--hic--you. I've just--hic--rattled away the hic--last dollar."

There was a scene then, as might be expected, for Mrs. Mencke was not a
woman to tamely submit to such wrong and abuse, and the thought that the
whole of her own, as well as Violet's fortune, had been squandered at
the gaming-table and the race-track was more than she could bear. She
could talk as few women can talk, and when she had ceased her
denunciations, Wilhelm Mencke was completely sobered, and sat pale and
sullen and cowed before her.

She did not realize how exceedingly bitter and sti