Thus was all prepared for the final denouement. Mrs. Lyndsay had not
gone so far without a reliance on the means to accomplish her object, and
for these means she had stooped to be indebted to the more practical
villany of Matilda's husband.

Jasper, in this visit to Paris, had first formed the connection which
completed the wickedness of his perverted nature, with that dark
adventuress who has flitted shadow-like through part of this varying
narrative. Gabrielle Desmarets was then in her youth, notorious only for
the ruin she had inflicted on admiring victims, and the superb luxury
with which she rioted on their plunder. Captivated by the personal
advantages for which Jasper then was preeminently conspicuous, she
willingly associated her fortunes with his own. Gabrielle was one of
those incarnations of evil which no city but Paris can accomplish with
the same epicurean refinement, and vitiate into the same cynical
corruption. She was exceedingly witty, sharply astute, capable of acting
any part, carrying out any plot; and when it pleased her to simulate the
decorous and immaculate gentlewoman, she might have deceived the most
experienced roue. Jasper presented this Artiste to his unsuspecting wife
as a widow of rank, who was about to visit London, and who might be
enabled to see Mr. Darrell, and intercede on their behalf. Matilda fell
readily into the snare; the Frenchwoman went to London, with assumed name
and title, and with servants completely in her confidence. And such (as
the reader knows already) was that eloquent baroness who had pleaded to
Darrell the cause of his penitent daughter! No doubt the wily Parisienne
had calculated on the effect of her arts and her charms, to decoy him
into at least a passing forgetfulness of his faith to another. But if
she could not succeed there, it might equally achieve the object in view
to obtain the credit of that success. Accordingly, she wrote to one of