"Poor boy, I'll pay. You can deduct it from the twenty thousand I owe you. No; not that, no; it will be a gift. You have given women so much money, let me be the first to pay a bill for you. What a luxury! I 'keeping' Prince Lubimoff."
They had gotten into the carriage, which was beginning to descend the slope toward La Condamine harbor.
"How people stare at us!" said Alicia. "They will think I am carrying you off by force. The Duchess de Delille, ruined, seduces a multi-millionaire Prince to make him her lover and get money out of him ... and they don't know that I am the one that is paying! Come laugh a little. Are you annoyed that I should pay? Don't you think it is amusing?"
She talked of her lack of foresight and her folly with a certain pride, as though it were something which placed her above people of regular habits. The evening before she had been afraid of not having enough money left to buy food for the next day. But Valeria had spent the morning making valuable discoveries in the closets! Bank notes lost among the clothes, Casino chips forgotten among the books, and even a thousand franc bill used to wrap up an old cake of soap.
She suddenly stopped enumerating these finds.
"Look! Look!"
They were beside the harbor. She pointed out a lady who was walking along the shore, among the tall rose-bay bushes trimmed in the shape of trees. It was Clorinda. A gentleman who seemed to be waiting for her rose from the bench, and came forward to meet her. They both recognized Atilio Castro, and observed how he and "the General" greeted each other, and how they continued their promenade together, so absorbed in mutual contemplation, that they did not notice the carriage.
Michael smiled slightly. Himself there, beside Alicia, who was causing him to commit every sort of folly; and the other man waiting there for Doña Clorinda's arrival with all the emotion of a youth! Poor enemies of women!
"Don't talk to me about her!" Alicia exclaimed in a rage, in spite of the fact that her companion had said nothing. "I hate her.... Think of poor Martinez forgotten. She quarrels with me to get him, takes him away from me, and then comes in search of Castro, while the other unhappy fellow is wandering about Monte Carlo. What a woman! She has done me so much harm! She is to blame for everything."
And as the Prince looked at her with a questioning air she explained her complaints with a tone of conviction. Her losses which had been so rapid and so complete, could not be explained logically. She had won for two weeks, and in a few hours had lost everything. How could that be? The evening before, as she was leaving the Casino, a respectable friend, an Italian Marchioness, a former dancer, who was very wise in matters of luck, and who had been gambling for the last thirty years in Monte Carlo, had revealed to her the cruel truth: "Duchess, there is some one who hates you; an envious friend who comes to your house and has cast an evil spell over you. That is the only way to explain what has happened. You must drive out the evil luck, turning it back on the person who gave it to you.