millionnaires; of wealth as the necessary instrument of ambition, as the
arch ruler of the civilized world. Never once, be it observed, in these
temptations, did Lucretia address herself to the heart; the ordinary
channels of vulgar seduction were disdained by her. She would not have
stooped so low as Mainwaring's love, could she have commanded or allured
it; she was willing to leave to Susan the husband reft from her own
passionate youth, but leave him with the brand on his brow and the worm
at his heart,--a scoff and a wreck.

At this time there was in that market-town one of those adventurous,
speculative men, who are the more dangerous impostors because imposed
upon by their own sanguine chimeras, who have a plausibility in their
calculations, an earnestness in their arguments, which account for the
dupes they daily make in our most sober and wary of civilized
communities. Unscrupulous in their means, yet really honest in the
belief that their objects can be attained, they are at once the rogues
and fanatics of Mammon. This person was held to have been fortunate in
some adroit speculations in the corn trade, and he was brought too
frequently into business with Mainwaring not to be a frequent visitor at
the house. In him Lucretia saw the very instrument of her design. She
led him on to talk of business as a game, of money as a realizer of cent
per cent; she drew him into details, she praised him, she admired. In
his presence she seemed only to hear him; in his absence, musingly, she
started from silence to exclaim on the acuteness of his genius and the
accuracy of his figures. Soon the tempter at Mainwaring's heart gave
signification to these praises, soon this adventurer became his most
intimate friend. Scarcely knowing why, never ascribing the change to her
sister, poor Susan wept, amazed at Mainwaring's transformation. No care
now for the new books from London, or the roses in the garden; the music
on the instrument was unheeded. Books, roses, music,--what are those