"In them? Damme, what wasn't in them? My dear feller, every beater who had carried cartridges had a dozen or two cartridges in his pockets then--it's a fact. And we'd done shootin', and the beaters were goin' home, so they couldn't pretend they were just carryin' the bally cartridges in their pockets to have 'em handy. But there wasn't a cartridge of mine missing among the lot. They knew only too well they wouldn't be able to sell to the local ironmonger cartridges with a coat of arms on 'em--eh what? And that's why I now have my cigarettes tattooed in the same way. I believe my servants used to rob them by the hundred. They don't now, except perhaps a handful to smoke themselves, and of course that's only natural. What was it you were askin' me just now? Ah, yes, about Vera Thorold. She seems to be a flyer." "Did you speak to her?" "Oh, yes, I talked to her right enough. She did look well. Simply lovely. White cloth frock, you know. She's all alone at Monte, stayin' at the _Anglais_." "Did she say how long she'd be there?" "No. I didn't ask her. She was winnin' the night I saw her. I never saw such devil's luck--never. I lost over a thousand on the week, so I thought it time to pay my hotel bill--what?" The three of us made the tour of Tattersall's together, admiring, criticising, fault-finding. Among Thorold's horses was the mare I had ridden on that last day I had been at Houghton. What a long time ago that seemed! I felt tempted to make a bid for her next day, she had carried me so well. Then I thought again of my well-beloved. What an extraordinary girl she was! Ah! how I loved her. Why had she not told me that she meant to go to the Riviera? Why-- An idea flashed in upon me. I was getting bored with the mad hurry of London. This would be a good excuse for running out to the Cote d'Azur. Indeed, my chief reason for remaining in town had been that I believed Vera to be there still, either in hiding for some reason of her own, or, what I had thought far more likely, forced against her will by that blackguard Paulton to remain in concealment and keep me in ignorance of her whereabouts. Instead of that she was "on her own"--how I hate that slang phrase--at Monte Carlo `winnin' a fortune,' as Lord Logan had put it. "A strange world, my masters!" Never were truer words spoken. The longer I live the more I realise its strangeness. When I arrived at Monte Carlo by the day rapide from Paris, rain was pelting down in torrents, and a fierce storm was raging. Wind shrieked along the streets. Out at sea, lightning flashed in the bay, while the thunder rattled like artillery fire. I was glad to find myself in the warm, brilliantly-lit _Hotel de Paris_, and when, after dinner, I strolled into the fumoir, it was so crowded that I had difficulty in finding any place to sit.