Monte Carlo.
Dear Richard,
A friend in need is a friend indeed. Accept my thanks for your prompt and ready help. All the same, I could not wait till it came, and borrowed again from the Brazilian. His obnoxious money has brought me luck. If it had been the other way about—well, never mind. It was a mad, desperate plunge on my part. Now that it is over I cannot understand how I could nerve myself for it. But I have won. The night before last I raked in two hundred and fifty thousand francs besides all that I had lost. After that I laid down to sleep. Your money has just arrived. I shall send it back at once with what you sent me before, and the amount I have wrung out of Riise. Jeanne has started packing.
To-morrow we leave here. We are going for Jeanne’s sake. She has taken my gambling too much to heart.
Now, if you possibly can, forget this little episode. I wasn’t completely myself. It’s all over, and too late to repent. We intend to spend the rest of the winter in Tangiers and Cairo, and probably in Helvan. Jeanne wants to go to India, and I have no objection so long as the journey is not too difficult. At all events, we shall spend a few weeks in Paris, just to fit ourselves out stylishly.
It is positively disgraceful of me that I have forgotten to congratulate you on the birth of your son and heir. How I should like to see your paternal countenance—you might send me a photograph of yourself with the Crown Prince, and now, farewell, till circumstances throw us together again.
Elsie.