"Go to bed, sir," bawled his uncle, "or I'll kick you out of the room. I'll have no drunkards here."
Luckless Dick's evil genius prompted an easy retort. "Then you'd better go first, sir; for I've seen you drunk oftener than you've seen me!"
The next instant he was at Belle's side pleading for disbelief. "No, no, Belle! it's a lie! I am mad--drunk--anything--only it is not true!" His denial struck home to the girl's heart when the angry assertion might have glanced by. A flash of intelligence lit up the past: she recollected a thousand incidents, she remembered a thousand doubts which had made no impression at the time; and before Colonel Stuart's inarticulate splutterings of wrath found words, her eyes met Dick's so truthfully, so steadily, that he turned away in despair, in blank, hopeless despair.
"Why to-morrow?" he cried bitterly in answer to his uncle's order to leave the room instantly and the house to-morrow. "There's no time like the present, and I deserve it. Good-bye, Aunt Lucilla; you've been very kind, always; but I can't stand it any longer. Good-bye, all of you!"
He never even looked at Belle again; the door closed and he was gone.
"Poor, dear Dick!" remarked Mrs. Stuart in her high complaining voice. "He always had a violent temper, even as a baby. Don't fret about it, my dear,"--for large tears were slowly rolling down Belle's cheeks--"He will be all right to-morrow, you'll see; and he has really been steadiness itself of late."
"He wasn't anything to speak of either," urged Mildred with her usual good-nature. "Only a little bit on, and I expect he had no dinner."
"Dinner or no dinner, I say he was drunk," growled Colonel Stuart sulkily. "No one lies like that unless he is,--that's my experience."
But Belle scarcely realised what they said. Her heart was full of fear, and though sleep came with almost unwelcome readiness to drive thought away, she dreamt all night long that some one was saying, "One kind word, Belle, only one kind word," and she could not speak.