vehemence:

"That's right, my boy! that's right! Never, never play for money so long
as you live. You have no idea what perils lurk around the gaming-table,
or what an accursed spot Monte-Carlo is, beautiful as it is to look at.
Those lovely grounds are haunted with the ghosts of the suicides who,
ruined body and soul, have rushed unprepared into the presence of their
Maker."

None of the guests had ever seen Miss McPherson so excited, and for a
moment there was silence while they gazed at her wonderingly, as she sat
with lips compressed and nostrils dilated, looking intently over their
heads at something they could not see, but which evidently was very
vivid to her.

Mrs. Geraldine was the first to speak, and she said, half laughingly:

"You are quite as much prejudiced against _Rouge et Noir_ as your
brother, for when I told him I tried my luck at Monte-Carlo and won
twenty-five dollars, he seemed horrified, and I think it took him some
hours to regard me with favor again."

"Yes, and he had reason. The McPhersons have all good cause to abhor the
very name of gambling," Miss McPherson replied, hitching her chair a
little further away from Geraldine as from something poisonous; then, in
her characteristic way of suddenly changing the conversation, she said:
"You saw my nephew, Neil McPherson?"

"Oh, yes," Mrs. Jerrold replied. "We saw a good deal of him; he is very
fine-looking, with such gentlemanly manners for a boy. I should be glad