“Please, Uncle Lawrence, what do you mean, then?”
“I mean the way, the spirit in which you do things. If you are not conscious of it, how can I make you? I can not say more than I have. I came merely—”
“As a handwriting upon the wall, Uncle Lawrence?”
Lawrence Newt rose and stood a little back from the table.
“Yes, if you choose, as a handwriting on the wall. Abel, when the prodigal son came to himself, he rose and went to his father. I came to ask you to return to yourself.”
“From these husks, Sir?” asked Abel, as he looked around his luxurious rooms, his eye falling last upon the French print of Lucille, fresh from the bath.
Lawrence Newt looked at his nephew with profound gravity. The young man lay back in his chair, lightly holding his cigar, and carelessly following the smoke with his eye. The beauty and intelligence of his face, the indolent grace of his person, seen in the soft light of the lamp, and set like a picture in the voluptuous refinement of the room, touched the imagination and the heart of the older man. There was a look of earnest, yearning entreaty in his eyes as he said,
“Abel, you remember Milton’s Comus?”
The young man bowed.
“Do you think the revelers were happy?”