CHAPTER XI.
MONTE CARLO.
Toward the end of September, while the weather was so hot as to keep away from the south of France all but very determined travellers, an English gentleman, not very beautiful in his outward appearance, was sauntering about the great hall of the gambling-house at Monte Carlo, in the kingdom or principality of Monaco, the only gambling-house now left in Europe in which idle men of a speculative nature may yet solace their hours with some excitement.

Nor is the amusement denied to idle ladies, as might be seen by two or three highly-dressed _habituees_ who at this moment were depositing their shawls and parasols with the porters.

The clock was on the stroke of eleven, when the gambling-room would be open, and the amusement was too rich in its nature to allow of the loss of even a few minutes.

But this gentleman was not an _habitue_, nor was he known even by name to any of the small crowd that was then assembled.
But it was known to many of them that he had had a great "turn of luck" on the preceding day, and had walked off from the "rouge-et-noir" table with four or five hundred pounds.
The weather was still so hot that but few Englishmen were there, and the play had not as yet begun to run high.

There were only two or three,--men who cannot keep their hands from ruin when ruin is open to them.