She put on a maximum, Lady Dauntrey hastily placing a five-franc piece, not on the cheval, but more timidly on the six numbers of which ten and eleven were two. Mary lost and Eve won, for thirteen came up. The same thing happened several times in succession. If Mary chose a number, Lady Dauntrey included it in a transversale simple, or took the dozen in which it was. Mary invariably lost, while she won. It was as if she gave Mary bad luck, while Mary brought her good fortune, for never had Mary so often lost, never had Eve won so often in succession.
At last all the money which Mary had brought with her was exhausted, and Lady Dauntrey, who had raked in more than twenty louis, offered laughingly to lend her something to go on with. But Mary thanked her and refused, in spite of the tradition of the tables that borrowed money brings back good luck.
"I'm rather tired, and my head aches a little," she said. "I think I'll go home."
Eve rose also. "You call the Hôtel de Paris 'home?'" she asked.
"I begin to feel quite at home," Mary answered. "I've been there nearly three weeks, and it seems longer."
They walked together out of the bright room of the large decorative picture called jestingly "The Three Disgraces," on through the Salle Schmidt, and so to the atrium. "If you don't mind," said Lady Dauntrey, "I'll go with you as far as your hotel. There's a hat in a shop round the corner I've been dying for. Now, thanks to the luck you've brought me, I shall treat myself to it, as a kind of Christmas present. You know, day after to-morrow will be Christmas. Surely you'll be rather lonely in your 'home' then, or have you friends who are going to take you away for the day?"
"No," Mary replied, as they went down the steps of the Casino. "No one has mentioned Christmas. I suppose people don't think as much about celebrating Christmas here, where it's almost like summer. Besides, I have very few friends."
"Haven't you made a good many acquaintances?"
"Not many. Four or five. One lady has called—I think she is the wife of the chaplain of the Church of England—but I was out, and I haven't returned her visit yet. One seems to have so little time here! And the curé of Roquebrune, the village on the hill, has been—twice. I was out both times. I'm always out, I'm afraid. But that reminds me, I must send him a Christmas present for his church."
"I should be delighted if you'd dine with us on Christmas night," said Lady Dauntrey, cordially. "Do! At eight o'clock. We have such a merry party with us—all young, or if not young they feel so, which is the true Christmas spirit."