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For the moment her own troubles seemed small and easy to overcome, compared with the shipwreck of this miserable pair who had called themselves her friends. Dauntrey walked with his head down, his hat pulled over his eyes and his hands in his pockets. Mary noticed that, though the wind was the coldest she had known at Monte Carlo, he wore no overcoat.
They had arranged that he was to tell Lord and Lady Dauntrey not only of their engagement, but of Mary's decision to leave their house for a visit to Mrs. Winter. She, however, had summoned unexpected courage and had already broken the news. It had seemed treacherous, she explained to Vanno, to go to bed and say nothing; so on an impulse she had told them all; and both had been kind.
Dom Ferdinand was sulkily waiting for more remittances, and amusing himself meanwhile by throwing about a few louis here and there, undirected by his friend Lord Dauntrey. The Marquis de Casablanca had stopped play entirely, perhaps in the hope of setting his patron a wise example. The Collises had never been useful. Dodo Wardropp liked to gamble "on her own," and Mrs.
Then, as she undressed, showing exquisite underclothing, she followed her ambiguous remark by pouring out information concerning herself, her companions, and their plans. She was from Australia, and intimated that her father, lately dead, had left plenty of money. She had met Lord and Lady Dauntrey a month ago in Brighton at the Metropole.
Dauntrey asked, indulgently, in a dreaming voice, as if her love and the force of her fierce vitality were hypnotizing him. He spoke as if he were so near happiness again that he would gladly go anywhere, to find it once more with Eve. "I haven't made up my mind about that yet." "Oh, I thought you had! You always make up your mind so quickly when you want anything."
"Lady Dauntrey, I ask that you will open the door," Vanno said. Almost immediately a key turned in the lock, the door opened quickly, letting Eve Dauntrey step out, and was closed again by her husband. It would also have been locked, but before Dauntrey could turn the key, Vanno twisted the handle round violently, pushed the door back and thrust his foot into the aperture.
Dauntrey was provided with a bit of yellow paper, such as Mary had seen in the hand of the veiled woman. This, he was told, must be presented upstairs, and in the morning Dauntrey would receive the gift, or "loan," of two thousand francs.
There was no crowd round the chairs, as the morning throng had thinned for déjeuner, and she heard Lord Dauntrey say: "I assure you, Monseigneur, it never went as badly as this on my roulette at home. You saw the records. But nobody can win at every séance. Don't be discouraged. I'm confident my system's unbreakable in the end."
Only we must have money, and those jewels of hers she doesn't need them. We do. And we're meant to have them, else why should we have been thrown in her way just at the right moment? Why should we be now in this lonely house, no one knowing that we're here? It's Destiny. I saw that when she spoke about the jewel-case. Didn't you guess what was in my mind?" "I was past guessing," Dauntrey said.
She was paying high to be the guest of a "lady of title": she wanted her money's worth, and soon began to fear that there was doubt of getting it. Servants had been engaged in advance for Lady Dauntrey by the agent who had let the house. There were too few; and it needed but the first night's dinner to prove that the cook was third rate, though Lady Dauntrey carefully referred to him as the chef.
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