“Mother! mother!” he cried, catching her hand and kissing it, “what a mother you are!”
“You understand,” she said, “that it is because I believe you were not master of yourself, and that this is the exception, not the habit, that I am willing to do all I can for you.”
“The habit! No, indeed! I never staked more than a box of gloves before; but what’s the good, if she has made a vow against me?”
Mrs. Poynsett was silent for a few moments, then she said, “My poor boy, I believe you are both victims of a plot. I suspect that Camilla Tyrrell purposely let you see that pebble-token and be goaded into gambling, that she might have a story to tell her sister, when she had failed to shake her constancy and principle in any other way.”
“Mother, that would make her out a fiend. She has been my good and candid friend all along. You don’t know her.”
“What would a friend have done by you yesterday?”
“She neither saw nor heard my madness. No, mother, Lenore’s heart has been going from me for months past, and she is glad of this plea for release, believing me unworthy. Oh! that stern face of hers! set like a head of Justice with not a shade of pity—so beautiful—so terrible! It will never cease to haunt me.”
He sat in deep despondency, while Mrs. Poynsett overlooked her resources; but presently he started up, saying, “There’s one shadow of a hope. I’ll go over to Sirenwood, insist on seeing one her and having an explanation. I have a right, whatever I did yesterday; and you have forgiven me for that, mother!”
“I think it is the most hopeful way. If you can see her without interposition, you will at least come to an understanding. Here, you had better take this cheque for Sir Harry.”
When he was gone, she wondered whether she had been justified in encouraging him in defending Eleonora. Was this not too like another form of the treatment Raymond had experienced? Her heart bled for her boy, and she was ready to cry aloud, “Must that woman always be the destroyer of my sons’ peace?”