Sylvia hated herself for having contributed to his losses.  She knew that it was absurd that she should feel this, for the same cards would certainly have been dealt to whoever had happened to take them from the croupier.  But still, superstition is part of the virus which fills the gambler’s blood, and she had certainly won a considerable part of the money Count Paul had lost to-night.

“May I see you back to your house?” asked Chester of Madame Wachner.

“Oh no, Monsieur, I must go hack to the Casino and look after Fritz!  ’E is a child—­quite a child as regards money.”  Madame Wachner sighed heavily.  “No, no, you go ’ome to bed in the Pension Malfait.”

“I shouldn’t think of doing such a thing!” he said kindly.  “I will come back with you to the Casino, and together we will persuade Monsieur Wachner to go home.  He has had time to make or lose a good deal of money in the last few minutes.”

“Yes, indeed he ’as—­” again Madame Wachner sighed, and Chester’s heart went out to her.  She was a really nice old woman—­clever and intelligent, as well as cheerful and brave.  It seemed a great pity that she should be cursed with a gambler for a husband.

As they went back into the Casino they could hear the people round them talking of the Comte de Virieu, and of the high play that had gone on at the club that evening.

“No, he is winning now,” they heard someone say.  And Madame Wachner looked anxious.  If Count Paul were winning, then her Fritz must be losing.

And alas! her fears were justified.  When they got up into the Baccarat Room they found L’Ami Fritz standing apart from the tables, his hands in his pockets, staring abstractedly out of a dark window on to the lake.

“Well?” cried Madame Wachner sharply, “Well, Fritz?”

“I have had no luck!” he shook his head angrily.  “It is all the fault of that cursed system!  If I had only begun at the right, the propitious moment—­as I should have done if you had not worried me and asked me to go away—­I should probably have made a great deal of money,” he looked at her disconsolately, deprecatingly.

Chester also looked at Madame Wachner.  He admired the wife’s self-restraint.  Her red face got a little redder.  That was all.

“It cannot be helped,” she said a trifle coldly, and in French.  “I knew how it would be, so I am not disappointed.  Have you anything left?  Have you got the five louis I gave you at the beginning of the evening?”

Monsieur Wachner shook his head gloomily.

“Well then, it is about time we went home.”  She turned and led the way out.

CHAPTER XXIII

As Sylvia went slowly and wearily up to her room a sudden horror of Lacville swept over her excited brain.

For the first time since she had been in the Villa du Lac, she locked the door of her bed room and sat down in the darkness.