table. "Are you coming, Fanny?"

"I beg you, let us go now," murmured Mademoiselle Dorville in the ear of
her lover.

Her voice was caressing and full of tender promise. The young man
hesitated an instant. But to desert the game at his first loss seemed to
him an act unworthy of his reputation, and, as between love and pride,
the latter finally prevailed.

"I have only an hour or two more to wait. Can not you go home by
yourself?" he replied to Fanny's appeal, while Heloise exchanged her
counters for tinkling coin, forgetting, no doubt, to reimburse her
creditor, who, in fact, gave no thought to the matter.

Henri accompanied the two women to a coach at the door, which had been
engaged by the thoughtful and obliging Desvanneaux; and, pressing
tenderly the hand of his mistress, he murmured:

"Till to-morrow!"

"To-morrow!" she echoed, her heart oppressed with sad forebodings.

Desvanneaux, whose wife was very jealous of him, made all haste to regain
his conjugal abode.




CHAPTER IV