come?” and Vernon waited for an answer. The one addressed replied in the affirmative, and Mordant saw (with a shudder) the same figure which had lured him on in Pleasure to seek lost Happiness, now tempting the youth before him. The two were so like each other in outward appearance, that he wondered not that he too was deceived, and followed her with even more eagerness than he had ever done her more retiring sister. And then with that gay creature ever in mind, Mordant saw the young man led on from one place of amusement to another—from supper and wine to dice and a gambling-table—until ruin stared him in the face, and that mind, which had once been pure and untarnished, was fast becoming defaced by a too close connection with vice. Mordant was wiser now, and he saw how flimsy and unreal this figure of Pleasure appeared—how her gold was tinsel, and her laughter but the hollow echo of a forced merriment—unlike his own once possessed Happiness, whose treasures were those of a contented spirit—whose gayety proceeded from an innocent heart and untroubled conscience. Strange that he should have been so blinded to her beauties, and so unmindful of the other’s defects; but so it had been. Mordant sympathized with the young man as he watched him running headlong toward his own misery; but the scene continued before him—he had no power to prevent it—and now the last stake is to be played. On that throw of the dice rests the ruin of the small property he has inherited from his father. It is lost! and he beggared of the little he could call his own; and forth from the hell (in which he has been passing the night) rushes into the street. It wants but one stroke to complete the wreck of heart as well as of fortune, and that stroke is not long in coming. Miserable, he returned to his lodgings, and alone he thought of his position. He thought of Edith. “Love in a cottage, even could I by my own means regain what I have lost. Pshaw! the thing is ridiculous. Without money there can not be Happiness for her or for me.” A few months had sadly changed _him_, who before saw it only in her society. But now the Goddess of his fancy stands before him—her golden curls of the precious metal he covets—her eyes receiving their brightness from its lustre, and in his heart a new feeling asserts superiority, and he wishes to be rich. With money to meet every want he will command her presence—not sue for it; and Mordant remembered how, in pursuance of this ambition, gradually cooling toward her, he had at last broken off his engagement with Edith—how for some years, day and night had seen him toiling at his profession, ever with the same object in view, and how at last he had married a woman in every way what he desired: rich in gold and lands and worldly possessions, but poor in heart compared with Edith.