her an
associate in their profligate schemes.

The appearance of pestilence, meanwhile, threw them into panic, and they
hastened to remove from danger. Mrs. Villars appears to have been a
woman of no ordinary views. She stooped to the vilest means of amassing
money; but this money was employed to secure to herself and her
daughters the benefits of independence. She purchased the house which
she occupied in the city, and a mansion in the environs, well built and
splendidly furnished. To the latter, she and her family, of which the
Italian girl was now a member, retired at the close of July.

I have mentioned that the source of my intelligence was a kinsman, who
had been drawn from the paths of sobriety and rectitude by the
impetuosity of youthful passions. He had power to confess and deplore,
but none to repair, his errors. One of these women held him by a spell
which he struggled in vain to dissolve, and by which, in spite of
resolutions and remorses, he was drawn to her feet, and made to
sacrifice to her pleasure his reputation and his fortune.

My house was his customary abode during those intervals in which he was
persuaded to pursue his profession. Some time before the infection began
its progress, he had disappeared. No tidings were received of him, till
a messenger arrived, entreating my assistance. I was conducted to the
house of Mrs. Villars, in which I found no one but my kinsman. Here, it
seems, he had immured himself from my inquiries, and, on being seized by
the reigning malady, had been deserted by the family, who, ere they
departed, informed me by a messenger of his condition.

Despondency combined with his disease to destroy him. Before he died, he
informed me fully of the character of his betrayers. The late arrival,
name, and personal condition of Clemenza Lodi were related. Welbeck was
not named, but was described in terms which, combined with the narrative
of Mervyn, enabled me to recognise the paramour of Lucy Villars in the
man whose crimes had been the principal theme of our discourse.

Mervyn's curiosity was greatly roused when I intimated my acquaintance
with the fate of Clemenza. In answer to his eager interrogations, I
related what I knew. The tale plunged him into reverie. Recovering, at
length, from his thoughtfulness, he spoke:--

"Her condition is perilous. The poverty of Welbeck will drive him far
from her abode. Her profligate protectors will entice her or abandon her
to ruin. Canno