himself to be fascinated by the fierce delight which is
found in gaming; play had become his occupation, his chief need. Play
and its effects, the orgies that precede, the excesses that follow,
were the life of Edoardo. Waste and debt were the consequences; and
when he had, under a thousand pretences, extorted from his father all
the money he could, he began, on arriving in Padua, to apply to
Sophia, whom he neglected, at least did not see as often as he might,
though he still loved her. Sophia was as indulgent as he was
indiscreet. At every fatal request for money, she offered him double
the sum he had asked. When Edoardo began to tell her some feigned
story, to conceal the shameful source of his wants, and to give her
an account of how he had employed those sums, she would not listen to
him.

'Why,' said she, 'should I demand an account of your actions? Why
should I think over and debate what you have already considered? Will
not all you have be one day mine? Shall we not be one day man and
wife?' And these words took away from Edoardo every sense of remorse:
conscience ceased to reproach him for the baseness of despoiling that
poor girl of the little she possessed. The thought that he was one
day to make her his wife, justified him in his own eyes; for by this
he thought he should have recompensed her for all her sacrifices.

Edoardo's demands increased with his exigencies. He was making rapid
advances into the most terrible phases of the gamester's vice; and
the mania in Sophia of giving--of sacrificing all her means for
Edoardo, did not stop. All the money left her by her mother had
already disappeared; most of her valuable ornaments had been sold;
some of the bank bills had been parted with: but as this could not be
done without her father's knowledge, he had made the laws interpose,
and sequestrated the remainder. Sophia did not dare to speak or
complain. She felt in her heart that her father was probably in the
right, that her own conduct was at least unreflecting, and that
Edoardo's expenses were too great; but still she found a thousand
arguments to excuse both herself and him. She spent all the day
making flowers, and stole a great part of the night from repose to
devote it to this labour; but she, formerly so ready to make presents
of her flowers, and adorn with them the young girls of her
acquaintance, now exacted payment for them; so that every one
wondered at this new and sudden avarice. But what did sh