قراءة كتاب The Pit Town Coronet, Volume III (of 3) A Family Mystery.

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‏اللغة: English
The Pit Town Coronet, Volume III (of 3)
A Family Mystery.

The Pit Town Coronet, Volume III (of 3) A Family Mystery.

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دار النشر: Project Gutenberg
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faithful people she had known, and liked, and laughed at, and then the dreadful time at the Villa Lambert and what followed; and then her own triumphantly-successful trick—successful, perhaps, from the very simplicity of its audacity; and then her weary worthless after-life, with its sickening treadmill round of so-called gaiety and amusement. And then the child; why had he not died? It was for no love of her child that, by her agency, young Lucius had been foisted into the position of Haggard's heir. She had thought no further than to hide her shame, and in doing it she had unwittingly disinherited her own cousin's child. Why had Lucius not died?

Lucy's melancholy meditations were disturbed by the entrance of Fanchette, who handed her mistress a letter and left the room as silently as she had entered it. Lucy recognized the hand, and knew full well what the letter would certainly contain. She had guessed aright. Another demand for money from the man Capt. The words were respectful enough, there was no threat, but Lucy Warrender understood what it meant—the money or exposure.

A thousand pounds! As well might the daughters of Danaus try to fill their sieves with water, as Lucy Warrender attempt to satisfy the insatiable greed of the remorseless Capt. Miss Warrender placed the letter in the fire, and saw it consumed to ashes.

"Unless I win heavily," she thought, "you will not be gratified, Maurice Capt. Then, I suppose, you will try your master, but I fancy you will have a bad quarter of an hour with him." The thought gave her evident pleasure; it even made her smile.

And then she darkened the room, and flinging herself upon the sofa lay down to sleep away the hot afternoon till it should be time for dinner and the subsequent roulette.

Eight o'clock saw Miss Warrender in a charming toilette of electric blue. The little bonnet with its short curling feathers did not hide the great wavy masses of golden hair; the little cape with its fur trimming, and the tiny muff, even the gloves and the boots, were of the same colour. As Lucy Warrender entered the Rooms she smiled, and she talked with several of her acquaintances. That hoary old sinner, General Pepper, C.B., bowed profoundly to her, and paid her his old-fashioned compliment.

"Dayvilish pretty little woman," he remarked to his friend Colonel Spurbox, late of the Carabineers; "knew her years ago in Rome. Wears well and don't look her age. Those little plump fair women never do. Gad, she's not got her earrings on; sent them to her uncle's, I suppose. She'll go for the bank, Spurbox, to-night. Plucky little devil. I hope she'll win."

The eyes of the two warriors gazed after the retreating maid with sympathetic admiration.

"Crisp little thing, eh?" continued the general.

"Monstrous," echoed his comrade, with ready acquiescence. "Let's go and drink her health, and then we'll go into the thick of it and see how she gets on."

The two old bucks ambled off to drink Lucy Warrender's health; they wished her well. Much good may it do her.

As Miss Warrender walked towards the great room where the worshippers of the Goddess Fortune most do congregate, the big suisses, in their handsome liveries and chains of office, bowed obsequiously; they all knew her as an habituée and a constant customer of the tables. When she reached the roulette table itself, that veteran diplomatist, one of the oldest and most faithful of her admirers, the Duc de la Houspignolle, offered to vacate his chair, with many a protestation and a succession of courteous bows.

"I have been unlucky, dear Mademoiselle Warrender; Fortune has frowned on me, but now I am far happier, for I exchange her frowns for the smiles of Venus."

"I won't take your chair, duke," said Lucy. "I may lean upon it, and try to be your Mascotte and to bring you luck."

But somehow or other, whether the pretty Englishwoman's presence upset the old gambler's calculations or not I cannot tell, but he lost, and in a quarter of an hour rose from his seat.

"Revenge me on the Philistine, dear lady, if you can," said the old man, "for I am décavé—but don't take my unlucky chair, I pray you. You will?" he continued in astonishment. "Well, if you will you must; at all events take my card, it may help you," and he handed her the little card with the big black-headed pin, by means of which the experienced players mark and register the exact result of each successive coup.

Lucy Warrender took the chair with a smile, and laughed gaily, as with the card she received a little tender squeeze from the wicked old hand, and then she sat down with a full determination, as the Americans put it, "to plank down her bottom dollar." Lucy Warrender was sitting next to the croupier. She handed him one of her thousand-franc notes and he gave her in exchange a little rouleau, neatly sealed at both ends, containing the equivalent in gold. For nearly three-quarters of an hour Miss Warrender confined herself to stakes of one or two Napoleons at a time, which she pushed out before the little glittering pile in front of her, and which were placed upon the desired square with wonderful rapidity by the obsequious croupier. It is a curious fact that your croupier, that well-paid but honest official, for some mysterious reason or other always mentally identifies himself with the bank; it gives him absolute pleasure to rake in the winnings, and he feels some strange vicarious twinge of agony when he commences the process of paying out. But whenever Miss Warrender won, this particular croupier pushed her gains towards her with a little smile, and strange to say didn't seem to feel it in the least. And now Lucy looked at her card. For twenty-seven coups she had placed a single Napoleon upon the number twenty-seven. Of course, at roulette, some number or zero itself is bound to come up every time, but number twenty-seven was invariably unlucky. Lucy Warrender's left hand was thrust into the pocket of her dress; it clutched, as an Ashantee warrior clutches his fetish, the key of her room at the Hotel de Russie, and from the key hung its little brass label—it was number twenty-seven. For three-quarters of an hour then, and for twenty-seven coups, Miss Warrender had pursued her Will-o'-the-Wisp; the one or two Napoleons that she staked each time was mere child's play to her, for as we know she was in the habit of gambling heavily. At the twenty-eighth coup Miss Warrender changed the amount of her stake upon the unfortunate number; for the twenty-franc piece she substituted a hundred-franc note and handed it to the croupier; he thrust it into the great glass and metal cash-box at his side and pushed five Napoleons on to the square marked twenty-seven. "Messieurs, le jeu est fait. Rien ne va plus," said the bald-headed high priest of the table, who sat exactly opposite the gentleman with the rake, who had so deftly carried out Miss Warrender's directions. He seized the big plated handle, gave it the necessary twirl as he said the words, and tossed the little ball of fate, with the usual professional spin, upon the rapidly-revolving disc. Round flew the wheel of fortune, and round flew the ball, making little irregular jumps. As the whirling disc revolves less rapidly, every eye is fixed upon the ball. The wheel is about to stop. The ball jumps into 15, thence into 17. The wheel has almost stopped; the ball will surely rest in No. 23. No, it has not quite stopped, it goes a

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