ost in a revery, when I heard myself accosted by name. I looked
up, and beheld a man whom I had often seen with Tyrrell, both at Spa and
(the watering place, where, with Gertrude, I had met Tyrrell). He was a
person of low birth and character; but esteemed, from his love of
coarse humour and vulgar enterprise, a man of infinite parts--a sort
of Yorick--by the set most congenial to Tyrrell's tastes. By this undue
reputation, and the levelling habit of gaming, to which he was addicted,
he was raised, in certain societies, much above his proper rank: need I
say that this man was Thornton? I was but slightly acquainted with
him; however, he accosted me cordially, and endeavoured to draw me into
conversation.

"'Have you seen Tyrrell?' said he, 'he is at it again; what's bred in
the bone, you know, etc.' I turned pale with the mention of Tyrrell's
name, and replied very laconically, to what purpose I forget. 'Ah! ah!'
rejoined Thornton, eying me with an air of impertinent familiarity,
'I see you have not forgiven him; he played you but a shabby trick at
------; seduced your mistress, or something of that sort; he told me all
about it: pray, how is the poor girl now?'

"I made no reply; I sank down and gasped for breath. All I had suffered
seemed nothing to the indignity I then endured. She--she--who had once
been my pride--my honour--life--to be thus spoken of--and--. I could not
pursue the idea. I rose hastily, looked at Thornton with a glance which
might have abashed a man less shameless and callous than himself, and
left the room.

"That night, as I tossed restless and feverish on my bed of, thorns, I
saw how useful Thornton might be to me in the prosecution of the scheme
I had entered into; and the next morning I sought him out, and purchased
(no very difficult matter) both his secrecy and his assistance. My plan
of vengeance, to one who had seen and observed less of the varieties of
human nature than you have done, might seem far-fetched and unnatural;
for while the superficial are ready to allow eccentricity as natural in
the coolness of ordinary life, they never suppose it can exist in
the heat of the passions,--as if, in such moments, anything was ever
considered absurd in the means which was favourable to the end. Were the
secrets of one passionate and irregulated heart laid bare, there would
be more romance in them than in all the fables which we turn from with
incredulity and disdain, as exaggerated and overdraw