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108 rise to Fame. She had been modelling herself after a much advertised tragedy queen. So at the door she paused to slip the melody of her gait into the upper register, and. quite as that lady would have towered upon such a scene, entered the room, to confront the other outstanding figure, her guide and mentor, MacAllister.

To vary the dry routine of poker, faro, baccarat, and roulette, he was reviving that old favourite, "three card Monte." It was a joy, though perhaps a doubtful and dangerous one, to watch him. The young bloods from the Avenue, or Sheridan Road, seemed quite willing to serve as victims on such an altar, as men with a sense of the artistic are willing to be hoaxed, even mulcted, provided the hoaxing or mulcting be not stupidly but deftly done.

Even Carlotta's rage diminuendoed into soft admiration as she gazed at those fingers, ever the first thing you noticed about him, long and white, not tapering but as slender at their base as at their well-manicured tips. It was almost like studying a virtuoso at the piano, his figure carrying out the illusion, so sharply contrasted it was, like the keys, in blacks and whites. Each flick of the deal was a grace note, every shuffle of the deck a finished chromatic scale.

He had seen Carlotta, of course—no one could have missed that dramatic entrance, but it suited him to ignore the tattoo of her bronzed slipper. After a few moments he summoned a substitute, and signing to her, withdrew into a bay window.

In this century of the rough metaphor, an interpreter of the quaint dialogue that followed is scarcely necessary. He first inquired "the occasion," "the motif," of her visit. And