on the certainty of success for the speculations
to which the proceeds so obtained were devoted, and he looked forward
to the moment when he might avow what he had done, and justify it by
doubling the capital withdrawn. But to his inconceivable horror, the
bill of the Canal Company was rejected in the Lords; the shares bought
at a premium went down to zero; and to add to his perplexity, the
speculator abruptly disappeared from the town. In this crisis he was
summoned to meet his indignant associates.

The evidence against him was morally damning, if not legally conclusive.
The unhappy man heard all in the silence of despair. Crushed and
bewildered, he attempted no defence. He asked but an hour to sum up the
losses of the bank and his own; they amounted within a few hundreds to
the 10,000 pounds he had brought to the firm, and which, in the absence
of marriage-settlements, was entirely at his own disposal. This sum he
at once resigned to his associates, on condition that they should defray
from it his personal liabilities. The money thus repaid, his partners
naturally relinquished all further inquiry. They were moved by pity for
one so gifted and so fallen,--they even offered him a subordinate
but lucrative situation in the firm in which he had been partner;
but Mainwaring wanted the patience and resolution to work back the
redemption of his name,--perhaps, ultimately, of his fortunes. In the
fatal anguish of his shame and despair, he fled from the town; his
flight confirmed forever the rumours against him,--rumours worse than
the reality. It was long before he even admitted Susan to the knowledge
of the obscure refuge he had sought; there, at length, she joined him.
Meanwhile, what did Lucretia? She sold nearly half of her own fortune,
constituted principally of the moiety of her portion which, at
Dalibard's death, had passed to herself as survivor, and partly of the
share in her deceased husband's effects which the French law awarded to
her, and with the proceeds of this sum she purchased an annuity for her
victims. Was this strange generosity the act of mercy, the result
of repentance? No; it was one of the not least subtle and delicious
refinements of her revenge. To know him who had rejected her, the rival
who had supplanted, the miserable pensioners of her bounty, was dear to
her haughty and disdainful hate. The lust of power, ever stronger in her
than avarice, more than reconciled her to the sacrifice of gold. Yes,