 became exhausted. He saw himself in imminent peril of
losing all that had heretofore distinguished him; and, conscious of no innate
worth to fall back upon, he recoiled from this calamity, with the instinct of a
soul shrinking from annihilation. To avoid it - wretched man! - or, rather, to
defer it, if but for a month, a day, or only to procure himself the life of a
few breaths more, amid the false glitter which was now less his own than ever -
he made himself guilty of a crime. It was just the sort of crime, growing out of
its artificial state, which society (unless it should change its entire
constitution for this man's unworthy sake) neither could nor ought to pardon.
More safely might it pardon murder. Fauntleroy's guilt was discovered. He fled;
his wife perished by the necessity of her innate nobleness, in its alliance with
a being so ignoble; and betwixt her mother's death and her father's ignominy,
his daughter was left worse than orphaned.
    There was no pursuit after Fauntleroy. His family-connections, who had great
wealth, made such arrangements with those whom he had attempted to wrong, as
secured him from the retribution that would have overtaken an unfriended
criminal. The wreck of his estate was divided among his creditors. His name, in
a very brief space, was forgotten by the multitude who had passed it so
diligently from mouth to mouth. Seldom, indeed, was it recalled, even by his
closest former intimates. Nor could it have been otherwise. The man had laid no
real touch on any mortal's heart. Being a mere image, an optical delusion,
created by the sunshine of prosperity, it was his law to vanish into the shadow
of the first intervening cloud. He seemed to leave no vacancy; a phenomenon
which, like many others that attended his brief career, went far to prove the
illusiveness of his existence.
    Not, however, that the physical substance of Fauntleroy had literally melted
into vapor. He had fled northward, to the New England metropolis, and had taken
up his abode, under another name, in a squalid street, or court, of the older
portion of the city. There he dwelt among poverty-stricken wretches, sinners,
and forlorn, good people, Irish, and whomsoever else were neediest. Many
families were clustered in each house together, above stairs and below, in the
little peaked garrets, and even in the dusky cellars. The house, where
Fauntleroy paid weekly rent for a chamber and a closet
