nothing but their accomplishment. I employed Thornton, who still
maintained his intimacy with Tyrrell, to decoy him more and more to the
gambling-house; and, as the unequal chances of the public table were not
rapid enough in their termination to consummate the ruin even of an
impetuous and vehement gamester like Tyrrell so soon as my impatience
desired, Thornton took every opportunity of engaging him in private play,
and accelerating my object by the unlawful arts of which he was master.
My enemy was every day approaching the farthest verge of ruin; near
relations he had none,--all his distant ones he had disobliged; all his
friends, and even his acquaintance, he had fatigued by his importunity or
disgusted by his conduct. In the whole world there seemed not a being who
would stretch forth a helping hand to save him from the total and
penniless beggary to which he was hopelessly advancing. Out of the wrecks
of his former property and the generosity of former friends, whatever he
had already wrung had been immediately staked at the gaming-house and as
immediately lost.

"Perhaps this would not so soon have been the case, if Thornton had not
artfully fed and sustained his expectations. He had been long employed by
Tyrrell in a professional capacity, and he knew well all the gamester's
domestic affairs: and when he promised, should things come to the worst,
to find some expedient to restore them, Tyrrell easily adopted so
flattering a belief.

"Meanwhile I had taken the name and disguise under favour of which you
met me at Paris, and Thornton had introduced me to Tyrrell as a young
Englishman of great wealth and still greater inexperience. The gambler
grasped eagerly at an acquaintance which Thornton readily persuaded him
he could turn to such account; and I had thus every facility of marking,
day by day, how my plot thickened and my vengeance hastened to its