very day approaching the farthest verge of ruin;
near relations he had none,--all his distant ones he had disobliged;
all his friends, and even his acquaintance, he had fatigued by his
importunity or disgusted by his conduct. In the whole world there seemed
not a being who would stretch forth a helping hand to save him from the
total and penniless beggary to which he was hopelessly advancing. Out of
the wrecks of his former property and the generosity of former friends,
whatever he had already wrung had been immediately staked at the
gaming-house and as immediately lost.

"Perhaps this would not so soon have been the case, if Thornton had not
artfully fed and sustained his expectations. He had been long employed
by Tyrrell in a professional capacity, and he knew well all the
gamester's domestic affairs: and when he promised, should things come
to the worst, to find some expedient to restore them, Tyrrell easily
adopted so flattering a belief.

"Meanwhile I had taken the name and disguise under favour of which you
met me at Paris, and Thornton had introduced me to Tyrrell as a young
Englishman of great wealth and still greater inexperience. The gambler
grasped eagerly at an acquaintance which Thornton readily persuaded him
he could turn to such account; and I had thus every facility of marking,
day by day, how my plot thickened and my vengeance hastened to its
triumph.

"This was not all. I said there was not in the wide world a being who
would have saved Tyrrell from the fate he deserved and was approaching.
I forgot, there was one who still clung to him with affection, and for
whom he still seemed to harbour the better and purer feelings of less
degraded and guilty times. This person (you will guess readily it was
a woman) I made it my especial business and care to wean away from my
prey; I would not suffer him a consolation he had denied to me. I used
all the arts of seduction to obtain the transfer of her affections.
Whatever promises and vows--whether of love or wealth--could effect were
tried; nor, at last, without success: I triumphed. The woman became
my slave. It was she who, whenever Tyrrell faltered in his course to
destruction, combated his scruples and urged on his reluctance; it was
she who informed me minutely of his pitiful finances, and assisted, to
her utmost, in expediting their decay. The still more bitter treachery
of deserting him in his veriest want I reserved till the fittest
occasion, and cont