"What! you want to hear all about it, do you? Well it's a bad business. I thought I had a right to a run of luck—after all my ill fortune. I calculated the chances; they were overwhelmingly in my favor. I staked my zero against another man's thousands—never mind how many—and I lost, and have only my zero to offer in payment. That is to say, my note of hand; and how much do you think that is worth, my girl? I would rather—I would rather," he added, passionately, changing his tone of levity for one of the bitterest despair—"I would rather be dead—dead, dead—than——"
"Oh, papa! papa! say it not! say it not! It is real. Such things are not mere words. They are real, father, father!—Die! You must not die."
"I have little cause to wish to die," he said, relapsing again into a sort of gloomy carelessness; "so that I could see any other way out of it. To be sure, one might run—one might play the part of a cowardly, dishonorable rascal, and run for it, Ella, if you like that better. Between suicide and the escapade of a defaulter, there is not much to choose; but I will do as you like."
"I would not willingly choose your dishonor," said she, shuddering; "but between the dishonor of the one course or the other, there seems little to choose. Only—only—if you lived, in time you might be able to pay. Men have lived, and labored, until they have paid all."
"Live and labor—very like me! Live, and labor, until I have paid all—extremely like me! Lower a mountain by spadefuls."
"Even spadefuls," she said; her understanding and her heart seemed both suddenly ripened in this fearful extremity—"even spadefuls at a time have done something—have lowered mountains, where there was determination and perseverance.
"But suppose there was neither. Suppose there was neither courage, nor goodness, nor determination, nor perseverance. Suppose the man had lived a life of indolent self-indulgence, until, squeeze him as you would, there was not one drop of virtue left in him. Crush him, as fate is crushing me at this moment; and I tell you, you will get nothing out of him. Nothing—nothing. He is more worthless than the most degraded beast. Better to die as a beast, and go where the beasts go."
She turned ghastly pale at this terrible speech—but, "No," she faltered out—"no—no!"
"You will not have me die, then?" he said, pursuing the same heartless tone; but it was forced, if that were any excuse for him. "Then you prefer the other scheme? I thought, he went on, "to have supped with Pluto to-night; but you prefer that it should be on board an American steamer."
"I do," she gasped, rather than uttered.