"The Devil--threw his rider--remounted; at the next fence Raglan took the lead, followed by Fairy and Beauty, and Beau, the Devil lying next; last fence but one taken by the quintette almost simultaneously, when Raglan, Beauty, and Beau came away together, the first-named winning a very fine race by half a length--Beauty being third, and close upon Beau, but Fairy was nowhere. D--nation! there is a pot of money gone, or not won, which amounts to the same thing in the end!" and crushing up the paper, he threw it on the writing-table of Sharpus. "Wanting more money?" said the latter, in a hollow voice. "Precisely so; out at the elbows--in low water--phrase it as you will. I have sold even my horse at last," replied the other, folding his arms, and regarding the lawyer mockingly. "And the ring given you by--by the King of Bavaria?" said Sharpus, with a sickly smile. "I retain but a paste imitation of that remarkable brilliant; and that I may present you as a mark of my regard and esteem." "I thought you had made something by a mercantile transaction, as you phrased it, when last on the Continent?" "So I did; 'the mercantile transaction' being nothing less than breaking the bank at Homburg, by steadily and successfully backing the red, and sending home all those who came for wool most decidedly _shorn_." "You should have saved some of those ill-gotten gains for future contingencies," said Sharpus. "How much easier it is to advise and to speculate than to act with care and decision!" sneered Guilfoyle. "I pity your poor wife," said the lawyer, sincerely enough. "She has no documentary proof that she is such," replied Guilfoyle, angrily. "Pshaw! what is pity? an emotion that is often at war with reason and with sense, too; for a handsome face or a well-turned ankle may make us pity the most undeserving object."