domineering way, 'When are you going to make over
your house and effects to me, Signor Vertua?'

"Vertua raised himself from the ground, saying, in a firm voice, 'At
once. This very moment, Chevalier. Come with me.'

"'Good,' said the Chevalier, 'you may drive there with me. To-morrow
you must leave it for good and all.'

"On the way neither of them spoke. When they came to the house in the
Rue St. Honore Vertua rang at the door, and a little old woman opened,
and cried, when she saw him, 'Oh, saviour of the world, is it you at
last, signor? Angela has been nearly dead with anxiety about you.'

"'Hush!' said Vertua. 'Heaven grant that Angela has not heard the
unlucky bell. I don't want her to know that I have come.' He took the
candle-holder from the amazed old woman's hand, and lighted the
Chevalier up the staircase to the salon.

"'I am ready for everything,' said Vertua. 'You detest me and despise
me. You ruin me for the gratification of yourself and others. But you
do not know me. I will tell you, then, that I was once a gambler like
yourself; that capricious fortune was as kind to me as to you; that I
travelled over the half of Europe, stopping wherever high play and the
expectation of large winnings attracted me to remain; that the gold in
the banque which I kept was heaped up as mountain high as in your own.
I had a devoted and beautiful wife, whom I neglected, who was miserable
in the midst of the most marvellous wealth. It happened once, in Genoa,
when I had started my banque there, that a young Roman lost all his
great fortune to me. As I begged of you to-day, he begged of me that I
would lend him as much money as would, at all events, take him to Rome.
I refused, with scornful laughter, and in his despair he thrust his
stiletto deep into my breast. The surgeons managed to cure me with
difficulty, and my illness was long and painful. My wife nursed me,
comforted me, supported me when I would have given in with the pain.
And with returning health there dawned within me, and grew stronger and
stronger, a feeling which I had never known before. The gambler is a
stranger to all the ordinary emotions of humanity, so that till then I
had no knowledge of love, and the faithful devotion of a wife. The debt
which my ungrateful heart owed to my wife burned in the depths of my
soul, as well as the sense of the wickedness of the occupation to which
I had sacrificed her. Like torturing spirits of vengeance appeared to