“Vertua raised himself from the ground, saying, in a firm voice, ‘At once. This very moment, Chevalier. Come with me.’

  “‘Good,’ said the Chevalier, ‘you may drive there with me. To-morrow you must leave it for good and all.’

  “On the way neither of them spoke. When they came to the house in the Rue St. Honoré Vertua rang at the door, and a little old woman opened, and cried, when she saw him, ‘Oh, saviour of the world, is it you at last, signor? Angela has been nearly dead with anxiety about you.’

  “‘Hush!’ said Vertua. ‘Heaven grant that Angela has not heard the unlucky bell. I don’t want her to know that I have come.’ He took the candle-holder from the amazed old woman’s hand, and lighted the Chevalier up the staircase to the salon.

  “‘I am ready for everything,’ said Vertua. ‘You detest me and despise me. You ruin me for the gratification of yourself and others. But you do not know me. I will tell you, then, that I was once a gambler like yourself; that capricious fortune was as kind to me as to you; that I travelled over the half of Europe, stopping wherever high play and the expectation of large winnings attracted me to remain; that the gold in the banque which I kept was heaped up as mountain high as in your own. I had a devoted and beautiful wife, whom I neglected, who was miserable in the midst of the most marvellous wealth. It happened once, in Genoa, when I had started my banque there, that a young Roman lost all his great fortune to me. As I begged of you to-day, he begged of me that I would lend him as much money as would, at all events, take him to Rome. I refused, with scornful laughter, and in his despair he thrust his stiletto deep into my breast. The surgeons managed to cure me with difficulty, and my illness was long and painful. My wife nursed me, comforted me, supported me when I would have given in with the pain. And with returning health there dawned within me, and grew stronger and stronger, a feeling which I had never known before. The gambler is a stranger to all the ordinary emotions of humanity, so that till then I had no knowledge of love, and the faithful devotion of a wife. The debt which my ungrateful heart owed to my wife burned in the depths of my soul, as well as the sense of the wickedness of the occupation to which I had sacrificed her. Like torturing spirits of vengeance appeared to me all those whose happiness, whose very existence, I had ruined, reproaching me, in hoarse and hollow voices, with the guilt and crime of which I had planted the germs. None but my wife could dispel the nameless sorrow, the terror, which then took possession of me. I made a solemn vow that I would never touch a card again. I tore myself away. I burst the bonds which had held me. I withstood the enticements of my croupiers, who could not get on when my luck was gone from the enterprise. I had bought a small country house near Rome, and there I fled with my wife as soon as I had recovered. Alas! for only one single year was it that I was vouchsafed a peace, a happiness, a contentment, such as I had never dreamt of. My wife bore me a daughter, and died a few weeks afterwards. I was in despair. I accused heaven, and then turned round and cursed myself and my sinful career, punished in this way by the eternal power, by taking my wife from me, who saved me from destruction — the only creature on earth who gave me comfort and hope. Like the criminal whom the dreadfulness of solitude terrifies, I fled from my country place to Paris. Angela blossomed up, the lovely counterpart of her mother. My whole heart hung upon her. For her sake I made it my business not only to keep a considerable fortune together, but to increase it. It is true that I lent money at high rates of interest. But it is a shameful calumny when I am accused of being a fraudulent usurer. Who are my accusers? Light-minded creatures, who torture and tease me till I lend them money, which they waste and squander as if it were of no value, and then are furious when I get it back from them with infallible strictness — the money which is not mine but my daughter’s, whose steward I consider myself to be. Not long ago I rescued a young man from ruin and disgrace by lending him a considerable sum. I knew he was very poor, and I said nothing about repayment till I knew he had succeeded to a fortune. Then I asked him to pay me. Would you credit it, Chevalier, this light-minded scoundrel, who was indebted to me for his very existence, wanted to deny his liability, and, when the law obliged him to pay me, he called me a vile skinflint. I could tell you of plenty similar cases, which have made me hard and unfeeling when I have been met with ingratitude and baseness. More than that, I could tell you of many bitter tears which I have wiped away, of many a prayer which has gone up to heaven for me and my Angela; but you would look upon that as boasting, and besides, as you are a gambler, you would care nothing about it. I hoped and believed that the eternal power was appeased. All delusion, for Satan was freely empowered to blind and deceive me in a more terrible manner than ever. I heard of your luck, Chevalier. Every day I was told of this one and the other having beggared himself at your banque. Then it came to me that I was destined to pit my luck, which had never failed me, against yours — that I was destined to put an end to your career. And this idea, which nothing but madness of the most extraordinary kind could have suggested to me, left me no further peace or rest. Thus I came to your banque. Thus my terrible folly did not leave me until my fortune — no, my Angela’s fortune — was all yours. But you will let my daughter take her clothes away with her, will you not?’

  “‘I have nothing to do with your daughter’s clothes,’ answered the Chevalier; ‘and you may take away the beds and the ordinary household things for cooking and so forth. What do I care for rubbish of that sort? But take care that nothing of any value of that which is now my property goes away amongst them.’

  “Old Vertua stared speechlessly at the Chevalier for a few seconds, then a stream of tears burst from his eyes. Like a man annihilated, all sorrow and despair, he sank down before the Chevalier with hands uplifted.

  “‘Have you any human feeling left in your heart?’ he cried. ‘Have some mercy! Remember it is not me whom you are dashing into ruin and misery, but my unoffending angel child — my Angela! Oh, have mercy upon her! Lend her the twentieth part of the fortune you have robbed her of. I know you will allow yourself to be implored. Oh! Angela, my daughter!’

  “And the old man moaned, sobbed, and called out the name of his child in heart-breaking tones.

  “‘I really don’t think I can stand much more of this stage business of yours,’ the Chevalier said indifferently, and in a bored manner. But the door opened, and a girl in a white night dress, with her hair undone, and death in her face, rushed up to old Vertua, raised him, took him in her arms, and cried, ‘Oh, father, I have heard it all — I know it all! Have you lost everything? — everything? You have still your Angela. What would be the use of money if you had not Angela to take care of you. Oh, father! don’t humiliate yourself more before this despicable, inhuman creature. It is not we, it is he who is poor and miserable in all his despicable riches, for he stands there in the most gruesome, comfortless loneliness. There is not one loving heart in the wide world to cling to his breast, to open to him when he is like to despair of life — of himself. Come, father, away from this house with me; let us go as quickly as we can, that the horrible creature may not gloat over our sorrow.’

  “Vertua sank half senseless into a chair, whilst Angela knelt down before him, took his hands, kissed them and stroked them, and told over, with childlike prolixity, all the accomplishments and acquirements which she possessed, with which she would be able to support him comfortably, imploring him with the warmest tears to have no fear, inasmuch as life would, for the first time in her experience, begin to possess a real value and delightsomeness for her when — not for the enjoying of it, but for her father — she should stitch, sew, sing, play the guitar.

  “What obdurate sinner could have remained indifferent at the sight of Angela beaming in the fulness of her heavenly beauty, comforting her old father with sweet, delicious words, the deepest affection, and the most childlike purity and goodness streaming from the depths of her heart?

  “Things were very different with the Chevalier. An entire pandemonium of torture and pangs of conscience awoke within him. Angela seemed to him to be the punishing angel of God, before whose shining glory the cloud-shroud of sinful deception which had surrounded him vanished away, so that with terror he clearly saw himself in all his repulsive nakedness.

  “And through the midst of those hell-flames, which were consuming and raging in his heart, there came piercing a heavenly, pure beam of radiance, whose light was the sweetest bliss and the very joy of heaven, though the brightness of this ray had the effect of rendering the inexpressible torture more terrible.

  “The Chevalier had never known love before; and the instant he saw Angela he was seized by the most passionate affection for her, and, at the same time, with the destroying pain of complete hopelessness, for surely there could be no hope for one who had appeared to her in the light in which he had.

  “He longed to say something, but his tongue seemed to be paralysed. At length he so far mastered himself as to say, stammering, and in a trembling voice, ‘Signor Vertua, listen. I have not won anything from you — nothing of the kind. There is my strong box; take it, it is yours. Yes; and I have to pay you more than that. I am in your debt. Take it, take it!’

  “‘Oh, my girl!’ cried Vertua. But Angela went up to the Chevalier, beamed a proud look upon him, and said, gravely and calmly, ‘Learn, Chevalier, that there are higher things than money and possessions — things which you have no knowledge of — which, while filling our souls with the happiness of heaven, make us spurn your gifts with compassion and contempt. Keep the mammon upon which lies the curse which pursues you, heartless, accursed gambler.’

  “‘Yes!’ cried the Chevalier wildly; ‘cursed, cursed in verity may I be, if ever this hand of mine touches a card again. And if you repel me, Angela, it will be you who will bring inevitable destruction upon me. Oh, you don’t understand me. You must think me mad; but you will know it all when I lie before you with my skull shivered into fragments. Angela, it is life or death with me. Adieu!’

  “With this he dashed away in utter desperation. Vertua thoroughly understood him; he saw what had been passing in his heart, and tried to make the lovely Angela comprehend how certain eventualities might arise which would render it necessary to accept the Chevalier’s offers. Angela was afraid to allow herself to understand her father; she did not think it would ever be possible to regard the Chevalier otherwise than with contempt; but that mysterious chain of events which often forms itself within the profundities of the human heart, without our cognisance, brought to pass that which seemed unimagined — undreamt of.

  “The Chevalier felt as if suddenly awakened from a horrible dream. He saw himself standing on the brink of the abyss of hell, stretching his arms out in vain to the shining form of light which had appeared to him, not to save him, but to tell him of his damnation.

  “To the surprise of all Paris his banque opened no more, and he himself was no more seen, so that the most marvellous tales concerning him became current, each of them a greater falsehood than the others. He avoided all society; his love took the form of the profoundest, most unconquerable melancholy. One day he met old Vertua and his daughter in one of the lonely, shady walks of the garden at Malmaison.

  “Angela, who had believed she would never be able to look upon the Chevalier again but with horror and contempt, felt strangely moved when she saw him so pale and distressed, scarce able to lift his eyes to her in the excess of his reverence for her. She knew that, since that eventful night, he had given play up entirely, and completely altered his mode of life, and that she — she alone — was the cause of this. She had saved him from destruction; could anything flatter a woman more?

  “When old Vertua had exchanged the ordinary civilities with him, she spoke to him in a tone of gentle pity, saying, ‘What is the matter, Chevalier? You look ill and unhappy. You ought to go and consult a doctor.’

  “We can understand that her words filled him with comfort and hope. He was a different man in a moment. He lifted his head, and managed to talk once more in the manner which, when it welled from his very heart in former days, used to attract and endear him to all who knew him. Vertua reminded him that he had not come to take possession of the house he had won.

  “‘Very well, I will come,’ he answered, with an inspiration breaking upon him. ‘I will come to-morrow; but we must discuss all the conditions at proper length and leisure, even if it should take months.’

  “‘So be it, Chevalier,’ said Vertua, with a smile. ‘Perhaps we may come to discuss matters which we do not quite see into at present.’

  “The Chevalier, inwardly comforted, resumed all the charm of manner and all the delightful qualities which had distinguished him before he was carried away by his devouring passion. His visits at Vertua’s became more and more frequent, and Angela grew more and more disposed towards the man whose guardian angel she had been, till at last she believed she loved him with all her heart, and promised him her hand, to the great joy of old Vertua, who saw in this the settlement of his losses.

  “One day Angela, now the happy betrothed of the Chevalier Menars, was sitting at a window, lost in all the sweet dreams and happy fancies which young ladies in her position are believed to be wont to entertain, when a regiment of Jaegers came marching along, with trumpets sounding bravely, on their way to join in the Spanish campaign. She was looking with pitiful sympathy at the men thus going to face death in this war, when a very young officer, who was reining his horse quickly to one side, looked up at her, and she fell back fainting in her seat.

  “Alas! This young Jaeger, marching off to face death in the field, was no other than young Duvernet, the son of a neighbour, with whom she had grown up, who had been nearly daily in the house, and had only kept out of the way since the Chevalier had made his appearance. In the look of bitter reproach which the lad cast at her — and the bitterness of death itself was in it — she now, for the first time, read not only how unspeakably he loved her, but how boundlessly she loved him, without having been aware, whilst dazzled by the Chevalier’s brilliance. Now. for the first time, she understood Duvernet’s anxious sighs? — his silent, unassuming, unobtrusive attentions; now, and now only, she read her own embarrassed heart — what moved her disquiet breast when Duvernet came, when she heard his voice.

  “‘Too late! he is lost to me!’ cried the voice in her heart. She had the resolution to beat down and conquer the hopeless pain which would have torn her heart; and just because she had this resolution she was successful.

  “The Chevalier was too observant not to see that something had been occurring to disturb her; but, tenderly enough, he refrained from trying to unriddle a mystery which she thought herself bound to conceal from him. He contented himself, by way of clearing anything hostile out of the path, with hastening on the wedding. The arrangements connected with it he ordered with such admirable consideration and such delicate tact, that from his very care in this respect for her state of mind, she could not but form a higher opinion of his amiability than even before.

  “His conduct to her was marked with such observance of the most trifling of her wishes, with the sincere courtesy which springs from the truest and purest affection, that the remembrance of Duvernet naturally faded more and more from her memory. So that the first cloud-shadow which fell upon the brightness of their life was the illness and death of old Vertua.

  “Since the night when he had lost all he possessed to the Chevalier, he had never touched a card. But in the closing moments of his life all his faculties seemed to be engrossed with the game. Whilst the priest, who had come to administer the consolations of the Church to him on his departure from this life, spoke to him of spiritual things, he lay with closed eyes, murmuring between his teeth, ‘Perd! — Gagne,’ and making, with hands quivering in the spasms of death, the motions of dealing and playing out cards. Angela and the Chevalier, bending over him, called him by the tenderest names. He did not seem to hear them, or to know they were there. With a faint sigh of ‘Gagne!’ he gave up the ghost.

  “In her deep sorrow, Angela could not help an eery shudder at the manner of his departure. The remembrance of that night, when she had first seen the Chevalier as the most hardened reprobate of a gambler, came vividly to her mind, and the thought came into her soul that he might some day throw off his angel’s mask and, jeering at her in his pristine devilishness, begin his old life again.

  “This fearful presentiment was to come but too true.

  “Deeply shocked as the Chevalier was at the notion of old Francesco Vertua’s having gone into the next world heedless of the consolations of the Church, and unable to leave off thinking of the former sinful life, still, somehow — he could not tell why — it brought the memory of the game back to his mind again, so that every night in his dreams he was presiding at the banque once more, heaping up fresh treasures.

  “Since, Angela, impressed by the remembrance how her husband had appeared to her at first, found it impossible to maintain the trustful affection of her earlier wedded days, mistrust, at the same time, came into his soul of her, and he attributed her embarrassment to that secret which at once disturbed her peace, and remained unrevealed to him. This suspicion produced in him misery and annoyance, which he expressed in utterances which pained Angela. By a natural psychical reflex action, the remembrance of the unfortunate Duvernet revived in her mind, and with it the miserable sense that the love which had blossomed forth in her young heart was lost and bidden adieu to for ever. The discord grew greater and greater, till it reached such a pitch that the Chevalier came to the conclusion that the life of retirement which he was leading was a complete mistake, and longed with all his heart to be out into the world again.