that is the name for her, her own name, too. She would coin one's
vitals into money if she could. All Belle's fortune she has had, or
nearly all, and now she wants another five hundred, and she will have
it too.

"Here we are," and he drew a letter from his pocket written in a bold,
but somewhat uneducated, woman's hand.

"Dear Bill," it ran, "I've been unlucky again and dropped a pot. Shall
want 500 pounds by the 1st October. No shuffling, mind; money down;
but I think that you know me too well to play any more larx. When can
you tear yourself away, and come and give your E---- a look? Bring
some tin when you come, and we will have times.--Thine, The Tiger."

"The Tiger, yes, the Tiger," he gasped, his face working with passion
and his grey eyes glinting as he tore the epistle to fragments, threw
them down and stamped on them. "Well, be careful that I don't one day
cut your claws and paint your stripes. By heaven, if ever a man felt
like murder, I do now. Five hundred more, and I haven't five thousand
clear in the world. Truly we pay for the follies of our youth! It
makes me mad to think of those fools Cossey and Son forcing that place
into the market just now. There's a fortune in it at the price. In
another year or two I might have recovered myself--that devil of a
woman might be dead--and I have several irons in the fire, some of
which are sure to turn up trumps. Surely there must be a way out of it
somehow. There's a way out of everything except Death if only one
thinks enough, but the thing is to find it," and he stopped in his
walk opposite to the window that looked upon the street, and put his
hand to his head.