“It was a sight to call up all my resources.  To allow her to remain now, with my feelings towards her all changed and my father’s eyes fully opened to her stony nature, was impossible.  Nor could I appeal to law.  An open scandal was my father’s greatest dread and divorce proceedings his horror.  The child would have to go unless I could find a way to influence her through her own nature.  I knew of but one—­do not look at me, Miss Strange.  It was dishonouring to us both, and I’m horrified now when I think of it.  But to me at that time it was natural enough as a last resort.  There was but one debt which my wife ever paid, but one promise she ever kept.  It was that made at the gaming-table.  I offered, as soon as my father, realizing the hopelessness of the situation, had gone tottering from the room, to gamble with her for the child.

“And she accepted.”

The shame and humiliation expressed in this final whisper; the sudden darkness—­for a storm was coming up—­shook Violet to the soul.  With strained gaze fixed on the man before her, now little more than a shadow in the prevailing gloom, she waited for him to resume, and waited in vain.  The minutes passed, the darkness became intolerable, and instinctively her hand crept towards the electric button beneath which she was sitting.  But she failed to press it.  A tale so dark called for an atmosphere of its own kind.  She would cast no light upon it.  Yet she shivered as the silence continued, and started in uncontrollable dismay when at length her strange visitor rose, and still, without speaking, walked away from her to the other end of the room.  Only so could he go on with the shameful tale; and presently she heard his voice once more in these words: 

“Our house is large and its rooms many; but for such work as we two contemplated there was but one spot where we could command absolute seclusion.  You may have heard of it, a famous natural grotto hidden in our own portion of the coast and so fitted up as to form a retreat for our miserable selves when escape from my father’s eye seemed desirable.  It was not easy of access, and no one, so far as we knew, had ever followed us there.

“But to ensure ourselves against any possible interruption, we waited till the whole house was abed before we left it for the grotto.  We went by boat and oh! the dip of those oars!  I hear them yet.  And the witchery of her face in the moonlight; and the mockery of her low fitful laugh!  As I caught the sinister note in its silvery rise and fall, I knew what was before me if I failed to retain my composure.  And I strove to hold it and to meet her calmness with stoicism and the taunt of her expression with a mask of immobility.  But the effort was hopeless, and when the time came for dealing out the cards, my eyes were burning in their sockets and my hands shivering like leaves in a rising gale.

“We played one game—­and my wife lost.  We played another—­and my wife won.  We played the third—­and the fate I had foreseen from the first became mine.  The luck was with her, and I had lost my boy!”