"All I ask is—make Blanche happy."
Cecil looked down upon her upturned face, and met her loving glance with a look of unutterable tenderness; then drawing her head to him, he pressed his lips upon her eyes; she threw her arms around him, and exclaimed,—
"How can I help being happy with him?"
Much affected by this scene, Vyner again pressed Cecil's hand with great warmth, kissed his child, wiped his eyes, and withdrew; for his heart was full.
CHAPTER IV.
A BEAM OF SUNSHINE IN THE HOUSE.
Cecil was very earnest in his repentance, and sincerely meant to keep the oath he pledged. He at once sold his cab and horse; discharged his tiger; reduced his expenses in every practicable way; paid the great bulk of his debts; ceased to visit the club; ordered the servant to deny him to Frank Forrester, whenever that worthy called; and was assiduous at his painting.
Having thus shut himself out from temptation, and begun again the career of an honourable man, he ought once more to have been happy. He was so for a few days. Blanche's recovered gaiety, and her grateful fondness, made him bless the change. But the excitement soon wore off; and in getting into the broad monotonous rut of daily life, he began to miss the variety and excitement of his former pursuits.
He could not work with pleasure: he had lost all the "delight" which "physics pain." Work to him was drudgery, and it was no more. His spirits became low. From Blanche he hid the change as well as he could; but he could not hide it from himself. He would stand for half an hour before his easel, absorbed in reveries, and not once putting pencil to the canvass. He would sit for hours in an easy chair, smoking, or affecting to read; but his mind incessantly occupied playing imaginary games at rouge et noir, in which he was invariably a winner.
There is this excuse for the gambler: the temptation besets him in a more powerful shape than almost any other temptation to which man is exposed. Imagination, stimulated by cupidity, is treacherously active. The games being games of chance, imagination plays them not only with alarming distinctness, but with most delusive success. Heaps of gold glitter before the infatuated dreamer; and although he rouses himself with a sigh to find that he has only been dreaming, yet the dream has had the vividness of reality to him. Many and many an unhappy wight has started up from such dreams, goaded with a sense of their reality, and persuaded that, if he only play the game as he has just played it in imagination, he must infallibly win; has pawned his last remnant, or robbed his employers, to rush to the gaming-table, and venture everything on the strength of that conviction. Ruined, perhaps dishonoured, people have exclaimed, The wretch! or The scoundrel! and have been stern in their indignant condemnation of his pitiable folly. But little do they know to what fearful temptations he has succumbed; little do they know the fascination of the gaming-table to one who has played much, and whose hours have been crowded with imaginary games, in which he has been eminently successful.