At last all the money which Mary had brought with her was exhausted, and
Lady Dauntrey, who had raked in more than twenty louis, offered
laughingly to lend her something to go on with. But Mary thanked her and
refused, in spite of the tradition of the tables that borrowed money
brings back good luck.
"I'm rather tired, and my head aches a little," she said. "I think I'll
go home."
Eve rose also. "You call the Hotel de Paris 'home?'" she asked.
"I begin to feel quite at home," Mary answered. "I've been there nearly
three weeks, and it seems longer."
They walked together out of the bright room of the large decorative
picture called jestingly "The Three Disgraces," on through the Salle
Schmidt, and so to the atrium. "If you don't mind," said Lady Dauntrey,
"I'll go with you as far as your hotel. There's a hat in a shop round
the corner I've been dying for. Now, thanks to the luck you've brought
me, I shall treat myself to it, as a kind of Christmas present. You
know, day after to-morrow will be Christmas. Surely you'll be rather
lonely in your 'home' then, or have you friends who are going to take
you away for the day?"
"No," Mary replied, as they went down the steps of the Casino. "No one
has mentioned Christmas. I suppose people don't think as much about
celebrating Christmas here, where it's almost like summer. Besides, I
have very few friends."
"Haven't you made a good many acquaintances?"
"Not many. Four or five. One lady has called--I think she is the wife of
the chaplain of the Church of England--but I was out, and I haven't
returned her visit yet.
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