“Not a word now,” cried Longcluse harshly, extending his hand quickly towards him; “I may do that which can't be undone.”
CHAPTER LXXV.
BLIGHT AND CHANGE.
Danger to herself, Alice suspected none. But she was full of dreadful conjectures about her brother. There was, she was persuaded, no good any longer in remonstrance or entreaty. She could not upbraid him; but she was sure that the terrible fascination of the gaming-table had caused the sudden ruin he vaguely confessed.
“Oh,” she often repeated, “that Uncle David were in town, or that I knew where to find him!”
“But no doubt,” she thought, “Richard will hide nothing from him, and perhaps my hinting his disclosures, even to him, would aggravate poor Richard's difficulties and misery.”
It was not until the next evening that, about the same hour, she again saw her brother. His good resolutions in the interval had waxed faint. They were not reversed, but only in the spirit of indecision, and something of the apathy of despair, postponed to a more convenient season.
To her he seemed more tranquil. He said vaguely that the reasons for flight were less urgent and that she had better continue her preparations, as before, for her journey to Yorkshire.