"Good God! Cecil, what are you about to do?"
"To find out this liberal patron."
"Cecil, Cecil! do be calm!"
"I am. I will fling this cheque in his odious face, and tell him what I think."
She threw herself upon him.
"Cecil! my own darling! listen to your Blanche.... For God's sake, be calm! ... Think of me; think of your child! .... A duel! oh, Cecil! could you leave your child fatherless, Cecil?"
He flung her from him, and rushed out of the house: she reeled and fell. The child began to scream; the old lady living in the parlours hurried up stairs, and found Blanche lifeless on the floor.
Like a madman, Cecil bounded along the streets, goaded by one of those irresistible outbreaks of passion which sometimes mastered him. On reaching the house where Heath formerly lived, and hearing that he no longer lived there, he remembered Heath having just returned from abroad, and that his residence could only be known at his bankers. Thither he went: on his way he passed through Jermyn-street. It was in that street was kept the gaming-house where he had spent so many of his days and nights.
A new direction was given to his thoughts: insensibly they left the subject of Captain Heath to merge into that of play. Still he walked on, but less swiftly. The idea of the splendid martingale he had recently discovered, which this fifty pounds would enable him to play, would not leave him.
He walked more and more slowly. Fifty pounds—it might make his fortune.