CHAPTER XVIII MR. GREY’S STORY “Louie,” he began, “do you remember asking me once if I were a gambler?” “Yes, father.” “And I told you I was not?” “Yes, father.” “It was true at that time, for I had quit it, and was trying to be respectable; but I had been one in the worst sense of the word.” Louie tightened her grasp on his hands as he continued: “It began away back—was born in me, I think, for my father had it—a love for gambling, I mean, and a desire to live luxuriously. The first time I tried it was at Monte Carlo, where I went with my father when only eighteen. They will not let a young man into the play rooms unless he is twenty-one, but I was tall and looked old for my years, and an unscrupulous friend got me in somehow, and I nearly lost my head in the good luck which came to me. Why, within a week I gained a thousand dollars and I left the place with the love of gaming boiling in my veins so hotly that it has never cooled. I feel it yet, and do believe I should try it again if I had the chance. It is a disease, and you have no idea how it works like madness in the brain when once it has a foothold there. I was always thinking about it and planning how to make something for nothing, and my father encouraged me and laughingly called me his mascot. I was always betting and generally won. Then I began to try my luck with cards and was known as the most successful player in the set with which I was associated. For me to play was to win as a rule. I had no particular method. I simply won, and felt so sure of it that I think the assurance helped me to keep my nerves steady and my head cool, or else it was his Satanic Majesty who, some said, stood by my side and helped me. This went on until after I was married and you were born, and your mother never suspected it so well did I cover my tracks and so great was her faith in me. But it is a long road which never turns, and in Denver I began to lose as much as I gained. You remember we were sometimes poor and again had plenty of money and you thought it was the hard times which affected my business.” “Yes, and, oh, father,” Louie gasped, remembering the story Nancy Sharp had told her; “Is it true that you had a room there where young men and old, too, met at night and played for money! The Smith family who have moved here from Denver have told it and I have said it was a lie. Tell me it is!”