For three mortal hours Lucy Warrender clutched her hotel key, and played with varying success. At one time there was quite a little heap of notes and gold in front of her, upon which she discreetly laid her fan. She had steadily backed the number twenty-seven for varying but ever increasing amounts. The number twenty-seven had come up no less than eight times and had been the cause of Miss Warrender's winning heavily. The keenest eye at that time could have detected no wrinkle on Lucy's lovely girlish face. But fortune after a while ceased to favour her; the crowd of admiring onlookers, "the gallery," that had stood behind her chair attracted by her successes gradually dwindled, and the heap of gold and notes in front of her slowly but surely took unto themselves wings and flew away. But the gouty old Frenchman, the Duc de la Houspignolle, faithful knight that he was, still stood behind her chair. Old Pepper and the veteran Colonel Spurbox, of the Carabineers, still leered at her, in mingled pity and admiration, from the other side of the great roulette table. Lucy Warrender still clutched her key, and still backed fatal number twenty-seven; her mouth was dry and parched as she took out her last thousand-franc note, and, it not being permitted to stake that sum at roulette, she took it to the _Trente et Quarante_ table, and lost it at a single _coup_. The lady had played her last stake and lost it. She rose to leave. "Let me be your banker, dear Miss Warrender," whispered the aged Mephistopheles who stood behind her chair. "No, duke, not that. I haven't quite sunk to that yet, you know." "Always _farouche_, dear Miss Warrender, but I apologize," he continued as he gave her his arm. Perhaps the little hand that rested on it trembled slightly, but Lucy was a Warrender, and plucky; she nodded and bowed in every direction; she smiled and simpered as sweetly as of yore; she sat in the great restaurant at one of the little marble tables and sucked an _orangeade glacée_ through two straws, and then the Duc de la Houspignolle escorted her back to the Hotel de Russie with all respect, where Fanchette anxiously awaited her arrival. Fanchette didn't ask her mistress how she had prospered, for her gesture as she flaccidly dropped into her lounge-chair told the woman all she wished to know. "You can go, Fanchette," said Lucy; "if I want anything I'll touch the hand-bell." The woman yawned, courtesied and departed. Lucy Warrender opened her writing-case and commenced an affectionate letter to her uncle. In it she said incidentally: