CHAPTER II.
LOVE NOT KILLED BY UNKINDNESS.
For what will love's exalting not go through,
'Till long neglect and utter selfishness
Shames the fond pride it takes in its distress?
LEIGH HUNT.—Rimini.
Cecil had removed to miserable lodgings at Hammersmith, consisting of two rooms, and those wretchedly furnished; he had also reduced his expenses by giving up his atélier, and was now, without pretence at concealment, a gambler, and nothing else.
Blanche's grief when she first discovered his relapse was not so great as might have been expected, simply because she had to defend him against the bitter accusations of her father, and in the effort to excuse her husband in the eyes of another, she succeeded in greatly excusing him in her own.
There were doubtless many sleepless nights she had to pass, moodily contemplating the probable consequences of their fate; but when Cecil came home, her sorrow fled. Either he had won, and then his gaiety charmed her, and she allowed herself to be seduced into sharing his sanguine expectations; or else he had lost, and then she had to comfort and console him, and in that effort to assuage his grief, forgot her own.
There was something indescribably affecting in the tender solicitude and unshaken love of this gentle creature for her wretched husband; she had truly married him for better and for worse, in sickness and in health, in joy and in sorrow, and no adversity could alter the current of that love, which flowed from the everlasting fountain of her heart. He had blighted her youth; he had blighted the existence of their child; but she loved him perhaps still more dearly than on that happy day when the priest had joined them at the altar. He had been weak, contemptible, even infamous; but he had never ceased to be the idol of her heart.
One day she missed her watch; that watch which Cecil had given her, and which had always been at her side. She hunted about the house for it. All day she was in great distress at having lost it, and endeavoured in vain to persuade herself that perhaps Cecil had taken it out with him. He returned at two o'clock in the morning. Her first question was,
"Darling, have you my watch?"
"No," said he sulkily.
"Oh, dear! oh, dear! it is lost, then—I have lost it—some one has stolen it!"