All the time she is playing, people come and go, and crowd around—people of all kinds, and of every nationality, the Russian prince, the English “milord,” the French _déclassée_, the German baron, the American millionaire, and the Italian tenor; but they might all be dummies for the notice she takes of them—and yet Mrs. Hazard is really fond of studying character and types. A famous and beautiful English actress stands perhaps just opposite to her, one who is proverbially lucky at the tables, and a crowd of onlookers gather round merely to watch her play, finding her infinitely more interesting when all her sensibilities are actually involved in the chances of the roulette, than when simulating the passions of a dramatic heroine. But though Mrs. Hazard is devoted to the pleasures of the theatre, and generally evinces the greatest interest in the personalities of the stage, she now remains quite unconcerned as to the proximity of this distinguished artist, whose very costume even would at any other time be an object of lively interest to her. While the gaming fever is upon her she is as one under a spell. She is as separate from her normal self as the opium-eater when the drug is working upon him. But it is not only at the foreign gambling-tables that Mrs. Hazard finds vent for her speculative spirit. Unknown to her husband—who, by the way, is never permitted to know what sums she really wins or loses, for his steady-going business mind would be simply appalled at them—she watches the money market with a close and keen interest, and increases or diminishes her winnings at play by means of “flutters” on the Stock Exchange. On one occasion she nearly came to financial and domestic grief over these transactions, for she had been playing heavily, and an unexpected crisis found her at settling-day with a balance on the wrong side, greater than she was able to meet. She dared not go to her husband for help; her luck at cards and on the racecourse was at the time persistently against her—she is an inveterate poker-player and backer of horses—and she was obliged to enlist the assistance of a handsome and wealthy young man of her acquaintance.