At first he had limited himself to ten
thousand; after breakfast it was to have been twenty thousand; then
thirty thousand was the ultimatum; and now he dismissed all thoughts of
limits from his mind, and was determined to risk or gain everything.
At midnight, he had lost forty-eight thousand pounds. Affairs now began
to be serious. His supper was not so hearty. While the rest were eating,
he walked about the room, and began to limit his ambition to recovery,
and not to gain. When you play to win back, the fun is over: there is
nothing to recompense you for your bodily tortures and your degraded
feelings; and the very best result that can happen, while it has no
charms, seems to your cowed mind impossible.
[Illustration: page338]
On they played, and the Duke lost more. His mind was jaded. He
floundered, he made desperate efforts, but plunged deeper in the slough.
Feeling that, to regain his ground, each card must tell, he acted on
each as if it must win, and the consequences of this insanity (for a
gamester at such a crisis is really insane) were, that his losses were
prodigious.
Another morning came, and there they sat, ankle-deep in cards.
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