Echo turned. "How can he be otherwise?" she said, sadly. "It's so often and often it happens, nowadays. Won't you try and influence him? He cares for you, darling!"
Nancy's hands were clasped tight about her knees. She stirred uneasily. "How can I, Echo? A boy has to have a little bit of a good time once in awhile. I wouldn't want him to be a molly-coddle! He won't be any the worse for it when he gets older and settled down."
"The worse for it!" The words fell sadly. "Don't you think he is the worse for it already? He's making no progress with his law-study and he's been two years out of college, now. There's nothing to blame but his drinking—and the company he keeps. What will be the end of it? Oh, Nancy, you have a responsibility. Every woman has with some one man. If women only wouldn't countenance it as they do!"
"But, Echo—you talk as if Chilly was—as if you thought he was doing something disgraceful. Why, he's a gentleman; he couldn't be anything but that, no matter what he did!"
Echo came to the bed and sat down beside the other. In her filmy night-gown, wound in the mist of her loosened gold shadowed hair she looked like some ethereal thing in the moonlight.
"Ah, that's just what so many say! That a gentleman is a gentleman whether he is drunk or sober! It's not so with other things. Is a gentleman a gentleman whether he lies, or cheats at cards, or not? Isn't there to be any standard, really? Don't you see that there never will be any penalty—as far as drinking is concerned—until women make it? Listen, Nancy. The year I came out, I went to a dance—my first big one. There was a boy there who followed me about all over the floor. He wanted me to dance with him, and he was—he could hardly walk. At first I was frightened, but at last I grew angry. I asked a lady why he was not asked to leave the floor. She seemed quite astonished and indignant. 'But,' she said, 'don't you know who he is? That's the son of General Moultrie!' It was Cale Moultrie. You know what became of him, don't you?"
"Yes." Nancy's voice was muffled. "But Chilly—"
"Oh, my dear, there was a time when Cale drank no more than the others, and everybody liked him—as they do Chilly. It's coming to be the same with him, I'm afraid. There's no penalty for him yet because he's Chisholm Allen—because he's father's son!"
She stopped, caught by the sound of a sob. In another moment her arms were around the frail little body and the flower-like face was pressed hard against her breast.
"I don't care if he is d-d-dissipated," said Nancy passionately. "I'd rather have him come to me d-d-drunk than any other man sober! He's just Ch-Ch-Chilly, all the same!"