We were just on the other side of the Seine, when I perceived the woman of the Jardin des Plantes approach. Tyrrell (for that, I afterwards discovered, was really his name) started as she came near, and asked her, in a tone of some asperity, where she had been? As I was but a few paces behind, I had a clear, full view of the woman's countenance. She was about twenty-eight or thirty years of age. Her features were decidedly handsome, though somewhat too sharp and aquiline for my individual taste. Her eyes were light and rather sunken; and her complexion bespoke somewhat of the paleness and languor of ill-health. On the whole, the expression of her face, though decided, was not unpleasing, and when she returned Tyrrell's rather rude salutation, it was with a smile, which made her, for the moment, absolutely beautiful. "Where have I been to?" she said, in answer to his interrogatory. "Why, I went to look at the New Church, which they told me was so superbe." "Methinks," replied the man, "that ours are not precisely the circumstances in which such spectacles are amusing." "Nay, Tyrrell," said the woman, as taking his arm they walked on together a few paces before me, "nay, we are quite rich now to what we have been; and, if you do play again, our two hundred pounds may swell into a fortune. Your losses have brought you skill, and you may now turn them into actual advantages." Tyrrell did not reply exactly to these remarks, but appeared as if debating with himself. "Two hundred pounds--twenty already gone!--in a few months all will have melted away. What is it then now but a respite from starvation?--but with luck it may become a competence." "And why not have luck? many a fortune has been made with a worse beginning," said the woman. "True, Margaret," pursued the gambler, "and even without luck, our fate can only commence a month or two sooner--better a short doom than a lingering torture." "What think you of trying some new game where you have more experience, or where the chances are greater than in that of rouge et noir?" asked the woman. "Could you not make something out of that tall, handsome man, who Thornton says is so rich?" "Ah, if one could!" sighed Tyrrell, wistfully. "Thornton tells me, that he has won thousands from him, and that they are mere drops in his income. Thornton is a good, easy, careless fellow, and might let me into a share of the booty: but then, in what games can I engage him?" Here I passed this well-suited pair, and lost the remainder of their conversation. "Well," thought I, "if this precious personage does starve at last, he will most richly deserve it, partly for his designs on the stranger, principally for his opinion of Thornton. If he was a knave only, one might pity him; but a knave and fool both, are a combination of evil, for which there is no intermediate purgatory of opinion--nothing short of utter damnation."