herself in a dangerous and uncongenial element. The supper-party which Roger insisted on standing that night in honour of his aunt and the three Miss Brimley Bomefields was remarkable for the unrestrained gaiety of two of the participants and the funereal mirthlessness of the remaining guests.

‘ “I do not think,” Christine confided afterwards to a friend, who reconfided it to Bertie van Tahn, “that I shall ever be able to touch pâté de foie gras again. It would bring back memories of that awful evening.”

‘For the next two or three days the nieces made plans for returning to England or moving on to some other resort where there was no casino. The aunt was busy making a system for winning at petits chevaux. Number eight, her first love, had been running rather unkindly for her, find a series of plunges on number five had turned out even worse.

‘ “Do you know, I dropped over seven hundred francs at the tables this afternoon,” she announced cheerfully at dinner on the fourth evening of their visit.

‘ “Aunt! Twenty-eight pounds! And you were losing last night too.”

‘ “Oh, I shall get it all back,” she said optimistically; “but not here. These silly little horses are no good. I shall go somewhere where one can play comfortably at roulette. You needn’t look so shocked. I’ve always felt that, given the opportunity, I should be an inveterate gambler, and now you darlings have put the opportunity in my way. I must drink your very good healths. Waiter, a bottle of Pontet Canet. Ah, it’s number seven on the wine list; I shall plunge on number seven tonight. It won four times running this afternoon when I was backing that silly number five.”

‘Number seven was not in a winning mood that evening. The Brimley Bomefields, tired of watching disaster from a distance, drew near to the table where their aunt was now an honoured habituée, and gazed mournfully at the successive victories of one and five and eight and four, which swept “good money” out of the purse of seven’s obstinate backer. The day’s losses totalled something very near two thousand francs.

‘ “You incorrigible gamblers,” said Roger chaffingly to them, when he found them at the tables.

‘ “We are not gambling,” said Christine freezingly; “we are looking on.”

‘ “I don’t think,” said Roger knowingly; “of course you’re a syndicate and aunt is putting the stakes on for all of you. Any one can tell by your looks when the wrong horse wins that you’ve got a stake on.”

‘Aunt and nephew had supper alone that night, or at least they would have if Bertie hadn’t joined them; all the Brimley Bomefields had headaches.

‘The aunt carried them all off to Dieppe the next day and set cheerily about the task of winning back some of her losses. Her luck was variable; in fact, she had some fair streaks of good fortune, just enough to keep her thoroughly amused with her new distraction; but on the whole she was a loser. The Brimley Bomefields had a collective attack of nervous prostration on the day when she sold out a quantity of shares in Argentine rails. “Nothing will ever bring that money back,” they remarked lugubriously to one another.

‘Veronique at last could bear it no longer, and went home; you see, it had been her idea to bring the aunt on this disastrous expedition, and though the others did not cast the fact verbally in her face, there was a certain lurking reproach in their eyes which was harder to meet than actual upbraidings. The other two remained behind, forlornly mounting guard over their aunt until such time as the waning of the Dieppe season should at last turn her in the direction of home and safety. They made anxious calculations as to how little “good money” might, with reasonable luck, be squandered in the meantime. Here, however, their reckoning went far astray; the close of the Dieppe season merely turned their aunt’s thoughts in search of some other convenient gambling resort. “Show a cat the way to the dairy—” I forget how the proverb goes on, but it summed up the situation as far as the Brimley Bomefields’ aunt was concerned.