CHAPTER III.

AT MONTE CARLO.

Reader, have you ever been to Monte Carlo, that loveliest spot in all the world, where nature and art have done so much; where the summer rains fall so softly, and the winter sun shines so brightly, and where the blue of the autumnal sky is only equaled by the blue of the Mediterranean sea, whose waves kiss the beautiful shore and cool the perfumed air?  If you have been there you do not need a description of the place, or of the mass of human beings, who daily press up the hill from the station, or, swarming from those grand hotels, hurry toward one common center, the tall Casino, whose gilded domes can he seen from afar, and whose interior, though, so beautiful to look upon, is, as Miss Betsey McPherson would express it, the very gate of hell.  Perhaps, like the writer of this story, you have stood by the long tables, and watched the people seated there; the white-haired, watery-eyed old men, whose trembling hands can scarcely hold the gold they put down with such feverish eagerness; the men of middle age, whom experience has taught to play cautiously, and stop just before the tide of success turns against them; the young men, who, with the perspiration standing thickly about their pale lips, and a strange glitter in their feverish eyes as they see hundreds swept away, still play recklessly, desperately, until all is lost, and they leave the accursed spot, hopelessly ruined, sometimes seeking forgetfulness in death, with only the silent stars looking down upon them and the restless sea moaning in their ears, lost, lost!  There are women too, at Monte Carlo, more, I verily believe than men; old women, who sit from the hour of noon to the hour of midnight; women, with their life’s history written on their wrinkled, wicked faces; women, who laugh hysterically when all they have is lost, and then borrow of their friends to try their luck again; women, who go from table to table with their long bags upon their arms, and who only risk five or ten francs at a time, and stop when their unlucky star is in the ascendant, or they feel that curious eyes are watching them.  For these habitual players at Monte Carlo are very superstitious, and it takes but little to unnerve them.  There are young women there too, who play first, to see if they can win, and when by the fall of the little ball their gold piece is doubled, they try again and again, until the habit is fixed, and their faces are as well known in the saloons as those of the old men with the blear eyes, which find time between the plays to scan these young girls curiously, and calculate their price.

And among these young women, Daisy McPherson sat the morning after her arrival at Monte Carlo, with a look of sweet innocence on her face, and apparent unconsciousness of the attention she was attracting.  She had been among the first who entered the salon at the hour of its opening, for she was eager for the contest.  She did not expect Archie to play, for she knew he would not break the promise made to his dying father.  But she was bound by no such vow, and she meant to make her fortune on the spot where gold was won so easily, and alas, so easily lost.