floundered--he made desperate efforts, but plunged deeper in the
slough. Feeling that, to regain his ground, each card must tell,
he acted on each as if it must win, and the consequences of this
insanity (for a gamester at such a crisis is really insane) were,
that his losses were prodigious.

'Another morning came, and there they sat, ankle-deep in cards.
No attempt at breakfast now--no affectation of making a toilet,
or airing the room. The atmosphere was hot, to be sure, but it
well became such a hell. There they sat, in total, in positive
forgetfulness of everything but the hot game they were hunting
down. There was not a man in the room, except Tom Cogit, who
could have told you the name of the town in which they were
living. There they sat, almost breathless, watching every turn
with the fell look in their cannibal eyes, which showed their
total inability to sympathize with their fellow-beings. All the
forms of society had been forgotten. There was no snuff-box
handed about now, for courtesy, admiration, or a pinch; no
affectation of occasionally making a remark upon any other topic
but the all-engrossing one.

'Lord Castlefort rested with his arms on the table:--a false
tooth had got unhinged. His Lordship, who, at any other time,
would have been most annoyed, coolly put it in his pocket. His
cheeks had fallen, and he looked twenty years older.

'Lord Dice had torn off his cravat, and his hair flung down over
his callous, bloodless checks, straight as silk.

'Temple Grace looked as if he were blighted by lightning; and his