Liane faced her, her countenance pale, her lips parted. She had held back in fear when this woman had entered, but the calm expression and pleasant smile had now entirely disarmed her suspicions. Yet she feared lest this woman whom she had known in the old days, should divulge the secret she had kept from her lover. George, the man she adored, was, she knew, fast slipping away from her. On the one hand she was forced to marry Zertho, while on the other this very woman, whom she feared, was to be bribed to accept her lover as husband. Liane looked into her face and tried to read her thoughts. But her countenance had grown cold and mysterious. "You were not always my friend," she said at last, in a low, strained tone. "No, not always," the woman admitted, in English. "I have seldom been generous towards my own sex. I was, it is true, Liane, until recently, your enemy," she added, in a sympathetic tone. "I should be now if it were not for recent events." "You intend, then, to prove my friend," Liane gasped excitedly, half-rising from her chair. "You--you will say nothing." "On the contrary, I shall speak the truth." "Ah, no," she wailed. "No, spare me that. Think! Think! surely my lot is hard enough to bear! Already I have lost George, the man I love." "Your loss is my gain," Mariette Lepage said slowly. "You have lost a lover, while I have found a husband." "And you will marry him--you?" she cried, dismayed. "I know what are your thoughts," the other said. "My reputation is unenviable--eh?" Liane did not answer; her lover sat rigid and silent. "Well," went on the woman known at the tables as "The Golden Hand," "I cannot deny it. All that you see here, my house, my furniture, my pictures, the very clothes I wear, I have won fairly at the tables, because--well, because I am, I suppose, one of the fortunate ones. Others sit and ruin themselves by unwise play, while I sit beside them and prosper. Because of that, I am pointed out by men and women as a kind of extraordinary species, and shunned by all save the professional players to whom you and I belong. But," she added, gazing meaningly at Liane, "you know my past as well as I know yours." The words caused her to turn pale as death, while her breath came and went quickly. She was in momentary dread lest a single word of the terrible truth she was striving to hide should involuntarily escape her. "Yes," Liane said, "I knew you well when I went daily to the Casino, and have often envied you, for while my father lost and lost you invariably won and crammed handsful of notes into your capacious purse. At first I envied you, but soon I grew to hate you." "You hated me, because even into my hardened heart love had found its way," she said reproachfully. "I hated you because I knew that you loved only gold. I had seen sufficient of you to know that you had no higher thought than of the chances of the red or the black. You had been aptly nicknamed `The Golden Hand.'"