MEN, with the passion for gambling strongly developed, who play for high stakes, are seldom honest. The love of self-interest is so powerful that they will readily sacrifice honour and principle rather than let their interests suffer. The Hon. Randolph Pym was a confirmed gambler; that is to say, in playing his own game of life, and in his case it was a low game: he was ready to resort to any means to gain his own ends. He was worldly in its basest sense, and self-aggrandizement, covetousness, vanity were ruling passions. Like all men of his type, he was most intolerant of defeat. Neither the snubbing to which Miss Lacey had subjected him, nor the difficulties he had brought upon himself by the charges he had made against Jim Spedwick, had sufficed to subdue his vanity, nor open his eyes t
