"He never had any luck. No. It's Vanda. She's in love."
"Vanda in love?" He laughed. "Nonsense!"
"Why not?" put in Minnie, the English girl, from her seat in the window.
He did not answer. His mother went on:
"Something has happened to Vanda lately. I don't know what, yet. When she was stopping with Aunt Eugenie she must have seen Roman every day. They rode together, too."
He walked over to the long window which opened into the rose garden. On the sward beneath it, thirty years ago, his father was shot in a famous duel with the rakish Prince Mniszek, neighbor and quondam friend.
"What will you say to him, if it is?" he asked.
The Countess considered. In her little world marriages were "arranged," thought out with the help of the Almanach de Gotha and a profound knowledge of the young couple's incomes, debts, acres and ancestors.
"Roman," she said, "is generous and chivalrous. I shouldn't mind helping him with his debts, if he'd only stop gambling."
"Does a man ever stop?"