'They played till dinner-time without intermission; and though the duke made some desperate efforts, and some successful ones, his losses were, nevertheless, trebled. Yet he ate an excellent dinner, and was not at all depressed; because the more he lost the more his courage and his resources seemed to expand. At first, he had limited himself to 10,000; after breakfast, it was to have been 20,000; then 30,000 was the ultimatum; and now he dismissed all thoughts of limits from his mind, and was determined to risk or gain everything. 'At midnight he had lost L48,000. 'Affairs now began to be serious. His supper was not so hearty. While the rest were eating, he walked about the room, and began to limit his ambition to recovery, and not to gain. 'When you play to win back, the fun is over: there is nothing to recompense you for your bodily tortures and your degraded feelings; and the very best result that can happen, while it has no charms, seems to your cowed mind impossible. 'On they played, and the duke lost more. His mind was jaded. He floundered--he made desperate efforts, but plunged deeper in the slough. Feeling that, to regain his ground, each card must tell, he acted on each as if it must win, and the consequences of this insanity (for a gamester at such a crisis is really insane) were, that his losses were prodigious. 'Another morning came, and there they sat, ankle-deep in cards. No attempt at breakfast now--no affectation of making a toilet, or airing the room. The atmosphere was hot, to be sure, but it well became such a hell. There they sat, in total, in positive forgetfulness of everything but the hot game they were hunting down. There was not a man in the room, except Tom Cogit, who could have told you the name of the town in which they were living. There they sat, almost breathless, watching every turn with the fell look in their cannibal eyes, which showed their total inability to sympathize with their fellow-beings. All the forms of society had been forgotten. There was no snuff-box handed about now, for courtesy, admiration, or a pinch; no affectation of occasionally making a remark upon any other topic but the all-engrossing one. 'Lord Castlefort rested with his arms on the table:--a false tooth had got unhinged. His Lordship, who, at any other time, would have been most annoyed, coolly put it in his pocket. His cheeks had fallen, and he looked twenty years older. 'Lord Dice had torn off his cravat, and his hair flung down over his callous, bloodless checks, straight as silk. 'Temple Grace looked as if he were blighted by lightning; and his deep-blue eyes gleamed like a hyaena. 'The baron was least changed. 'Tom Cogit, who smelt that the crisis was at hand, was as quiet as a bribed rat.