chance of winning money from him at cards. The presence of the
latter is to be a secret, because he is too ill-famed a personage to be
admitted into the lady's house; so they have arrived on the eve of the
appointed day, and put up at a village inn on the outskirts of the
cousin's estate. There they have spent the night in play. There also the
luck has turned; and the usual winner has lost ten thousand pounds. His
friend insists on cancelling the debt. He affects to scout the idea.
"The money shall, by some means or other, be paid."

The discussion is renewed with the same result, as they loiter near the
station, at which the younger will presently make a feint of arriving;
and for the first time he asks the elder why, with such abilities as
his, he has made no mark in life. The latter replies that he found and
lost his opportunity four years ago, in a woman, who, he feels more and
more, would have quickened his energies to better ends. He then, with
tolerable frankness, relates his story. The younger follows with his
own. But, for a reason which explains itself at the time, the connection
between the two escapes them.

The woman herself next appears on the scene, and with her, the girl
cousin. They are friends of old; and the married one has emerged from
her seclusion at the entreaty of the betrothed, to pass judgment on her
intended husband. The young girl is not satisfied with her own feeling
towards him whom she has promised to marry; though she has no misgiving
as to his sentiments towards her. She is to bring him for inspection to
the inn. And the friend, entering its parlour alone, is confronted by
her former lover, who has temporarily returned there.

A stormy dialogue ensues. She denounces him as the destroyer, ever lying
in wait for her soul. He taunts her with the malignant hatred with which
for years past from the height of her own prosperity she has been
weighing down his. She retorts in a powerful description of the love
with which he once inspired her, of the living death in which she has
been expiating her mistake. And as he listens, the old feeling in him
revives, and he kneels to her, imploring that she will break her bonds,
and secure their joint happiness by flying with him. She sees nothing,
however, in this, but a second attempt to ensnare her; and is repulsing
the entreaty with the scorn which she believes it to deserve, when the
younger man bursts merrily into the room. A wave of angry pain pass