“Monty, you are a dear.  I love you for that.  You looked like a Greek athlete.  Do you know—­it was foolish—­but I really was frightened.”

“Child, how could it have happened?” he whispered, leading her away.  “Fancy my little Peggy with no one to look after her.  What a beast I was to trust you to Pettingill.  I might have known the chump would have been knocked out by all this color.”  He stopped to look down at her and a light came into his eyes.  “Little Peggy in the great world,” he smiled; “you are not fit.  You need—­well, you need—­just me.”

But Mrs. Valentine had seen him as he stood revealed, and came up in search of Peggy.  It was almost morning, she told her, and quite time to go back to the hotel and sleep.  So in Bragdon’s charge they wandered off, a bit reluctantly, a bit lingeringly.

It was not until Monty was summoned to rescue “Reggie” Vanderpool from the stern arm of the law that he discovered the identity of Punchinello.  Manifestly he had not been in a condition to recognize his assailant, and a subsequent disagreement had driven the first out of his head.  The poor boy was sadly bruised about the face and his arrest had probably saved him from worse punishment.

“I told you I couldn’t wear a mask,” he explained ruefully as Monty led him home.  “But how could I know that he could hear me all the time?”

The day after the carnival Brewster drove his guests over to Monte Carlo.  He meant to stay only long enough to try his luck at the tables and lose enough to make up for the days at sea when his purse was necessarily idle.  Swearengen Jones was forgotten, and soon after his arrival he began to plunge.  At first he lost heavily, and it was with difficulty that he concealed his joy.  Peggy Gray was watching him, and in whispers implored him to stop, but Mrs. Dan excitedly urged him to continue until the luck changed.  To the girl’s chagrin it was the more reckless advice that he followed.  In so desperate a situation he felt that he could not stop.  But his luck turned too soon.

“I can’t afford to give up,” he said, miserably, to himself, after a time.  “I’m already a winner by five thousand dollars, and I must at least get rid of that.”

Brewster became the center of interest to those who were not playing and people marveled at his luck.  They quite misunderstood his eagerness and the flushed, anxious look with which he followed each spin of the wheel.  He had chosen a seat beside an English duchess whose practice it was to appropriate the winnings of the more inexperienced players, and he was aware that many of his gold pieces were being deliberately stolen.  Here he thought was at least a helping hand, and he was on the point of moving his stack toward her side when DeMille interfered.  He had watched the duchess, and had called the croupier’s attention to her neat little method.  But that austere individual silenced him by saying in surprise, “Mais c’est madame la duchesse, que voulez-vous?”