Meanwhile he resolved to keep sober, and he spent his time trying to perfect his "system" and watching the other players at the club. His burning ambition was to win back his fortune from the sharpers who had fleeced him. He cursed himself all the while for his folly in playing before he had learned the game. He knew the game now well enough, he flattered himself; all day long he pondered on the combinations, and at night myriads of cards floated through his head. He dreamed that he held the bank, and that his old adversaries sat with pale faces opposite to him aghast at their losses. One evening in April he appeared at the club and changed his accumulated dollars into chips. Fortune favored him that evening; his perfected "system" worked the right way. He walked home early the next morning, exhilarated and happy, with his pockets stuffed with bank-notes. He smoothed out and counted the crumpled bills when he arrived at his lodgings, and found that his pile had grown to $10,000, and for some days his dreams of success were fulfilled, and he was "cock of the walk" at the Turf and Jockey. He ordered champagne recklessly at dinner for the other men, though he drank little himself. He even wrote a little note to his wife in Paris, inclosing a thousand-dollar bank-note to buy some bonnets and a gown. "Nell will be surprised," he had said to himself, as he slipped the notes into the envelope. "By gad, when I get all my money back, I shall cut all this, and we will go to America on a ranch. Poor Nell! I haven't treated her right. I fear I have made a dreadful mess of it all." He went to the gaming-table that evening with a light heart, and with other thoughts than his "system" in his mind--thoughts which had not been his for years.