These two contrived, however, to get on very well together, and their intimacy continued for month after month, involving much expenditure of hard cash on his side, of sighs and lies on hers.
The infatuation of the man increased. He would have thrown away his all, nay, his life, for this woman. He became her very slave; and yet all the while he felt that she was not a good woman; he was ashamed of his ignoble passion.
Disgusted at his own folly, he took to drink again; he broke through his resolution of reform, and, turning his face round, began to retrace his steps down the hill—this time never to come back.
Susan had wormed out of him all his history, and found that he had considerable prospects on the death of some relative, so she did not desert him when his rapidly-increasing drinking propensities made of him a not over pleasant companion at times; but she tried to play the part of reformer and beautiful guardian angel of the man.
In reality, she contrived to sink him further into the abyss, and by this means make him more and more her slave. While preaching to him like a saint about his bad habits, she would put in suggestions and tantalizing thoughts, despairs and regrets that she knew were calculated to make him unhappy and drink the deeper when she was not by him. She made up her mind to be indispensable to him; he should be a miserable drunkard when she was not by; he should not forsake her, at any rate till his property came in and she had taken her fair share of it.
Of all the circumstances that combined to drag this weak, vacillating creature down, none were so dire as his friendship with this fiend in the shape of an angel.