Cecil was leaning against the table, with his hands in his pockets, looking pale and weary, but exultant.
“I’ve been in rare luck to-night!” he exclaimed. “Won a couple of ponies from poor old Len, and a whole hatful of I O U’s. Here they go!” And he swept a little pile of crumpled papers into the fire.
I glanced at de Cartienne to see how losing had affected him. Not in the ordinary way, at any rate. He was sitting back in his chair, with his arms crossed, a cigarette between his teeth and an inscrutable smile upon his thin lips. Somehow I did not like his expression. There was something a little too closely approaching contempt in it as he watched Cecil’s action and listened to the exultant ring in his tone—something which seemed to express a latent power to reverse the result with ease at any time he thought proper.
It was rushing to conclusions, no doubt; but as I glanced from Cecil’s boyish, handsome face, a trifle dissipated just now, but open and candid, to the pale, sallow countenance, the large black eyes, and cynical, callous expression of his friend, it seemed to me that I was looking from the face of the tempted to the face of the tempter. The one seemed like the evil genius of the other.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
“AS ROME DOES.”
I awoke on the following morning with that vague, peculiar sense of having entered upon an altogether new phase of life. By degrees my semi-somnolent faculties reasserted themselves and I remembered where I was. My new life had indeed begun in earnest.
I sprang out of bed and pulled up the blind. It was a very strange prospect I looked out upon, after the luxuriant hilly scenery of the home where I had lived all my life. Before me was a flat, uncultivated common, dotted here and there with a few stunted gorse-bushes and numerous sand-heaps. Farther away a long stretch of shingle sloped down to the foam-crested sea which, under the grey, sunless sky of the early winter’s morning, had a dull, forbidding appearance. Though it was not an inviting prospect, there was something attractive in its novelty, and, dropping the blind, I hastened into the bath-room and began dressing.
It was past eight o’clock when I got downstairs, but I saw no one about, so I let myself out by the front door and walked down the drive. The grounds were small and soon explored, and, having exhausted them, I passed through a wicket-gate into a little plantation of pine-trees and thence out on to the common. Then, for the first time in my life, I felt a strong sea-breeze, and, with my cap in my hand and my face turned seawards, I stood for a few moments thoroughly enjoying it.
“Glad to see that you’re an early riser, Mr. Morton. It’s a habit which, I’m sorry to say, my other pupils have not acquired.”
I turned round with a start. A tall, thin man, somewhat past middle age, with iron-grey hair and thin, regular features, was standing by my side. His eyes were the eyes of a visionary and a poet, and his worn, thoughtful face bore the unmistakable stamp of the student. I liked his appearance, careless and dishevelled though it was in point of attire, and knowing that this must be Dr. Randall, I felt a keen sense of relief.