She never saw him but once in the day, when she visited him in his bed about noon, and was aware that he was always at his club throughout the night.

She knew that he was gambling, and she hated gambling as being of all pastimes the most dangerous.

But she knew that he had ready money for his immediate purposes, and that two or three tradesmen who were gifted with a peculiar power of annoying their debtors, had ceased to trouble her in Welbeck Street.

For the present, therefore, she consoled herself by reflecting that his gambling was successful.

But her elation sprang from a higher source than this.