IN OUR ULTIMATE GOOD. SUCH IS THE ADVERSITY
WHICH MAY GIVE US THE JEWEL. BUT TO GET AT THE JEWEL WE MUST KILL
THE TOAD. MISFORTUNES OF THE SECOND CLASS BUT TOO OFTEN INCREASE
THE ERRORS OR THE VICES BY WHICH THEY WERE CREATED. SUCH IS THE
ADVERSITY WHICH IS ALL TOAD AND NO JEWEL. IF YOU CHOOSE TO BREED
AND FATTEN YOUR OWN TOADS, THE INCREASE OF THE VENOM ABSORBS EVERY
BIT OF THE JEWEL.

Never did I know a man who was an habitual gambler, otherwise than
notably inaccurate in his calculations of probabilities in the ordinary
affairs of life. Is it that such a man has become so chronic a drunkard
of hope, that he sees double every chance in his favour?

Jasper Losely had counted upon two things as matters of course.

1st. Darrell's speedy reconciliation with his only child. 2nd. That
Darrell's only child must of necessity be Darrell's heiress.

In both these expectations the gambler was deceived. Darrell did not
even answer the letters that Matilda addressed to him from France, to
the shores of which Jasper had borne her, and where he had hastened
to make her his wife under the assumed name of Hammond, but his true
Christian name of Jasper.

In the disreputable marriage Matilda had made, all the worst parts of
her character seemed suddenly revealed to her father's eye, and he saw
what he had hitherto sought not to see, the true child of a worthless
mother. A mere mesalliance, if palliated by long or familiar
acquaintance with the object, however it might have galled him, his
heart might have pardoned; but here, without even a struggle of duty,
without the ordinary coyness of maiden pride, to be won with so scanty
a wooing, by a man who she knew was betrothed to another--the
dissimulation, the perfidy, the combined effrontery and meanness of the
whole transaction, left no force in Darrell's eyes to the common place
excuses of experience and youth. Darrell would not have been Darrell if
he could have taken back to his home or his heart a daughter so old in
deceit, so experienced in thoughts that dishonour.

Darrell's silence, however, little saddened the heartless bride, and
little dismayed the sanguine bridegroom. Both thought that pardon and
plenty were but the affair of time a little more or little less. But
their funds rapidly diminished; it became necessary to recruit them. One
can't live in hotels entirely upon hope. Leaving his bride for a while
in a pleasant provincial town, not many hours di