Court Netherleigh. Mrs. Henry Wood

Robert really play?" pursued Selina.

      "I fear he does. Yes."

      "Could—could he play away our home—Moat Grange?"

      "For his own life. That is, mortgage its revenues."

      "But you don't, surely, fear it will come to this?" she cried in agitation.

      "Selina, I hardly know what I fear. Robert is not my brother, and I could not—I had no right—to question too closely. Neither, if I had questioned, and—and heard the worst—do I see what I could have done. Matters have gone too far for any aid, any suggestion, that I could have given."

      "What would become of us? Poor mamma! Poor Alice! Oh, what a trouble!"

      "You, at least, can escape the trouble, Selina; you can let me take you out of it. My home is not the luxurious home you have been accustomed to here; but it will afford you every comfort—if you will only come to it. Oh, my love, why do you let me plead to you so long in vain!"

      Selina Dalrymple pouted her pretty red lips. Oscar loved her to folly. She did not discourage him; did not absolutely encourage him. She liked him very well, and she liked his homage, for she was one of the vainest girls living; but, as to marrying him?—that was another thing. Had he possessed the rent-roll of a duke, she would have had him tomorrow; his income was a small one, and she loved pomp and show.

      "Now, Oscar!" she remonstrated, putting him off as usual. "Is it a time to bring in that nonsense, when we are talking and thinking of poor Robert? And here come mamma and Alice, for that's Miss Upton's carriage bringing them. They said they should be home early."

      And now we have to go back some few hours. It is very inconvenient, as the world knows, to tell two portions of a story at one and the same time.

      Turning out of one of the handsomest houses in Grosvenor Square, in the bright sunshine of this same Friday afternoon in June, went Robert Dalrymple, his step spiritless, a look of perplexity and pain on his young and attractive face. He had been saying farewell to Mary Lynn, and he felt, in his despairing heart, that it must be for life. Just a hint he whispered to her of the worst—that he had been heedless and reckless, and was ruined; but, woman-like, fond and confiding, she had told him she never would believe it, and if it was so, there existed all the more reason for her clinging to him.

      Ah, if it only might be! If the prospect just suggested to him by that good man, Francis Grubb, might only be realized! If he could pull up at any cost, and enter upon a peaceful life! If! None knew better than himself that there was no chance of it. All he had was gone—and, had not Mr. Grubb left it to his honour?

      Robert Dalrymple was ruined. Bitterly was the fact impressing itself upon him, as he walked there under the summer sunlight. Not only were all his available funds spent, but he had entered into liabilities thick and threefold, far beyond what the rent-roll at the Grange would be sufficient to meet. He had told Oscar Dalrymple this very morning that he did not play much the previous night. Oscar did not believe it, but it was true. Why did he not play much? Because he had nothing left to play with, and had sat, gloomy and morose, looking on at the other players. Introduced to the evil fascinations of play by Colonel Haughton, he was drawn on until the unhappy mania took hold upon himself. To remain away from the gambling table for one night would have been intolerable, for the feverish disease was raging within him. Poor infatuated man!—poor infatuated men, all of them, who thus lose themselves!—he was positively still indulging a vision of success and hope. Every time that he approached the pernicious table, it was rife within him, buoying him up, and urging him on—that luck might turn in his favour, and he might win the Grange back—or, rather, the money he had lost upon it. Thus it is with all gamblers who are comparatively fresh to the vice; only the vile old sinners such as Colonel Haughton and his confederate, Piggott, know what such is worth. The ignis-fatuus, delusive hope, beckoning ever onwards, lures them to their destruction. Pandora's box, you know, contained every imaginable evil, but Hope lay at the bottom. Even now, as Robert is walking to South Audley Street, a feverish gleam of hope is positively rising up within him. If he had only money to go to the tables that night, who knew but luck might turn, and he could extricate himself from his most pressing debts, and so be able to tell the whole truth to Mr. Grubb?—and how carefully he would avoid all evil in future, when Mary should be his wife! But—where was the use of conjuring up these fantastic visions, he asked himself, as he flung himself into a chair in his sitting-room, when he had no money to stake?

      Everything was gone, every available thing; he had nothing left but the watch he had about him, and the ring he wore—and a few loose shillings in his pocket. Nothing whatever, in the house, or out of it.

      Yes, he had, but it was not his. Farmer Lee, wishing to invest a few hundred pounds in the funds, had prayed his young landlord to transact the business for him, and save him a journey to London. Robert good-naturedly acquiesced. Had any man told him he could touch that money for his own purposes, he would have knocked the offender down in his indignation. The cheque, for the money to be transferred, had come from Mr. Lee that morning. There it lay now, on the table at his elbow, and there sat Robert, striving to turn his covetous eyes from it, yet unable, for it was beginning to bear for him the fascination of the basilisk. He wished it was in the midst of some blazing fire, rather than lying there to tempt him. For the notion had seized upon his mind that it was with this money, if he might dare to stake it, he might win back a portion of what he had lost. With a shudder he shook off the idea, and looked at his watch. Was it too late to take the cheque to its destination? Yes, it was; the afternoon was waning, and business places would be closed. Robert felt half inclined to hand it to Reuben, and tell him to keep it in safety.

      While in this frame of mind, that choice friend of his, Mr. Piggott, honoured him with a call. Whether that worthy gentleman scented the presence of the cheque, or heard of it casually from Robert, who was candid to a fault, certain it was that he did not leave Robert afterwards, but sat with him until the dinner-hour, and then took him out to dine. Robert locked up the cheque in his desk before he went.

      About eleven o'clock he came home again, heated with wine. Opening his desk, he snatched out the cheque and hid it away in his breast-pocket, as if it were something he had a horror of looking at. Piggott and Colonel Haughton had plied him with something besides wine; alluring hopes. Turning to leave the room, buttoning his coat over what it contained, he saw Reuben standing there.

      "Mr. Robert!—do not go out again tonight."

      Robert stared at the man.

      "Sir, I carried you in my arms when you were a child; your father, the very day he died, told me to give you a word of warning, if I saw you going wrong; let that be my excuse for speaking to you as you may think I have no right to do," pleaded Reuben, the tears standing in his faithful old eyes. "Do not go out again, sir; for this night, at any rate, stay away from the set; they are nothing but blacklegs. There's that Piggott waiting for you outside the door."

      "Reuben, don't be a fool. How dare you say my friends are blacklegs?"

      "They are so, sir. And you are losing your substance to them; and it won't be their fault if they don't get it all."

      Robert, eager to go out to his ruin, hot with wine, would not waste more words. He moved to the door, but Reuben moved more quickly than he, and stood with his back against it.

      "What farce is this?" cried Robert, in his temper. "Stand away from the door, or I shall be tempted to fling you from it."

      "Oh, sir, hear reason!" And the man's manner was so painfully urgent, that a half-doubt crossed his master's mind whether he could know what it was he was about to stake. "Three or four and twenty years ago, Mr. Robert—I'm not sure as to a year—I stood, in like manner, praying your uncle Claude not to go out to his ruin. He had come to London, sir, as fine and generous a young man as you, and the gamblers got hold of him, and drew him into their ways, and stuck to him like a leech, till all he had was gone. Moat Grange was played away, mortgaged, or bartered, or whatever it might be, for the term of his life; there's a clause in its deeds, as I take it you know, sir, that prevents its owner from encumbering it for longer—and, perhaps, that's usual with