This course was so consonant to the desperation of my temper and affairs, that I had no sooner entered on the second glass of this last bottle, than I was fully convinced of its propriety. It was surely more fitting that a gentleman should select the hour and the manner of his exit from the world, than submit like a common ruffian to the dictation of the law in these important matters. To die by the hand of oneself is not the highest sort of death, it is true; but I am one who would advance, although the ancient and best writers are against me in this matter, that there are occasions when a man may best serve his dignity by renouncing that which has ceased to be a cherished object to him. In this, at least, I have Cato the younger with me. Indeed I had already taken this resolve rather than submit my pride to those inconveniences that so depress the spirit, when a third glass of wine put me in mind of a thing the most importunate of any. There was a certain lady. Nothing can be more ludicrous than to consider of a ruined gamester broken by Fortune on her wheel, pausing in his last extremity for such a reason. But there it was. I could have wished to see the tears of defiance once again on her cheeks. In spite of the world, in spite of her family, of my evil history, of my cunning, plausible enemy, she had given me her proud little heart. She was the one person I might have turned to in this black hour, who would not have requited me with a sneer or a cold glance. Her stern old father had no sooner discovered how her affections stood committed towards me, and had learned the colour of my reputation, than he had whisked her away from town to his seat in the remote west country, and had vowed upon his soul to have me ducked in a ditch if I so much as showed my nose in those parts. These thoughts of dear, insolent little Cynthia had induced reflections that I could well have done without. It was plain that this last cast of the cards had left the game in the hands of Mr. Humphrey Waring. He had long had the ear of the old duke, Cynthia's father, and no man knew better how to push the advantages my misfortunes had given him over me. He would marry the greatest heiress in the west country, hate him as she might, whilst Jack Tiverton, the worthless rogue on whom she doted, or, if it please you better, the Right Honourable Anthony Gervas John Plowden-Pleydell, fifth Earl of Tiverton, that ill-fated nobleman, rotted in durance, or writhed in a rope at Tyburn, or spilt his brains on the carpet of his lodgings. But for all that I had a mind to attempt a little more mischief before I perished. Why not go to poor little town-bred Cynthia, immured in the country like a bird in a cage, and throw her obstinate old father and her cunning suitor into such a fright as they would not be likely to forget? Indeed, why not?