not less than they could beam out supplication.

For several days and nights he had scarcely any intervals of peace from
these soul-penetrating fancies, and these moments were due to visits.
But who came to visit? Not the writer to the signet, the brother of his
affianced, whom he had expected to see first of all as a friend, if not
as a relation, ready to extend the hand that would save him; not any of
those with whom he had shared the folly of extravagance, if not
dissipation, on whom he had lavished favours in the wildness of his
generosity. The first was felicitating himself on his sister's escape;
the latter received the lesson that teaches prudence _a la distance_.
His only visitors were one or two heads of families where he had been
received as a fashionable friend, and these came only to look and
inquire. Their curiosity was satisfied when they got out of him the
amount of his debt, and pleased when they considered that their
daughters were at home, and under no chance of becoming allied to a
prisoner. One or two old associates, too, paid their respects to him,
but they were of those who had resisted his fascinations and found their
pleasures in their studies. We seek for the virtues, but we do not
always find them in the high places, where masks, copied from them and
bearing their beautiful lineaments and their effulgence, are worn in
their stead only to cover the vices which are their very antipodes. No:
more often in lowlier regions, lying _perdu_ behind vices, not
voluntary, but often, as it were, inflicted and peering out, ashamed to
be seen, because arrayed in the rags of poverty. A solitary female
stole in to him. Who was she? One with whom he had formed a connection
of not an honourable kind, only now interrupted by the walls of the
prison? No. One whom he had long before cast off, only because the vice
he had inoculated her with had cast off the beauty that had inflamed
him. Nor did he know the meaning of that stealthy visit, which lasted
only for a few minutes--so unexpected, for he had not seen her during
many months, so singular, so unnatural, so unlike the world, returning
gratitude for injury, benediction for infamy, until, after she had
suddenly slipped away, he found by the side of the wall a small bottle
of wine. That form and face, once more beautiful in his estimation than
were those even now of his honourable affianced, entered among the
imagery of his reveries; but the diamond eyes never disp