"One hundred and nine thousand francs!" Schuyler announced at last. "I congratulate you, Mademoiselle. And I wish you'd let me advise you."
"If I did, what would you say?" Mary smiled.
"I should say: 'Go home to-morrow.'"
"But I've just come away from home. I don't want to go back."
"Well, then, go to some other place, a place without a Casino."
"I suppose that's good advice," said Mary. "But—I can't take it yet."
"I'm sorry," returned Peter's cousin.
The whole conversation had been in French from the first, as Madame d'Ambre knew little English; and Mary's accent was so perfect that to an American or English ear it passed as Parisian. Neither Hannaford, Schuyler, nor Carleton supposed that she had just arrived from England, though her name—if they had caught it correctly—was English or Scotch. "Mademoiselle" they called her, and wondering who and what she was, vaguely associated her with France, probably Paris.
"How long shall you stay?" asked Carleton, in the pause that followed.