"Confound it all," muttered he, as he wandered aimlessly from one deserted room to another: "the very house seems under a spell. Sybil, sitting like a recluse in her own rooms, growing pale, and wild-eyed, and spectre-like, every day. Evan, in his room, sick with drink, and verging on the D. T. Mother, gliding like a stately ghost from the one to the other, or closeted in her own room; she has not been down stairs to-day. Burrill, the devil knows where he is, and what took him out so unusually early this morning. He's been cutting it worse than ever for the past week; the fellow, seemingly, can't find company low enough for him, in one stage of his drunkenness, nor high enough for him in another. It's fortunate for us that liquor has at last relaxed his vigilance; the old man has taken a leading trick by the means. Curse the brute! Why won't he die in a drunken frenzy, or from overfeeding, but he won't!" Thus soliloquizing, he lighted a segar and went out into the grounds. "I'll try the effect of a little sunshine," he muttered; "for the house feels like a sarcophagus; one would think the family pride was about to receive its last blow, and the family doom about to fall."
So, restless and self-tormented, Frank Lamotte passed the long afternoon, in the double solitude of a man deserted, alike by his friends and his peace of mind.
"We make our own ghosts," said somebody once.
Frank Lamotte's phantoms had begun to manifest themselves, having grown into things of strength, and become endowed with the power to torture; thanks to the atmosphere into which he had plunged himself and them.
Late in the afternoon, John Burrill came home, but Frank avoided him, not caring to answer any questions at that time.
Burrill seemed to care little for this, or for anything; he was in a wonderfully jubilant mood. He rambled through the tenantless rooms, whistling shrilly, and with his hands in his pockets. He commanded the servants like a Baron of old. He drank wine in the library, and smoked a segar in the drawing room, and when these pleasures palled upon him, he ascended the stairs, and went straight to the room occupied by Evan.
For some time past, Jasper Lamotte had made an effort to break the bond of good fellowship, that, much to the surprise of all the family, had sprung up between the wild young fellow, and the coarser and equally or worse besotted elder one. How even reckless Evan Lamotte could find pleasure in such society, was a mystery to all who knew the two. But so it was, and Jasper Lamotte's interdict was not strong enough to sever the intimacy. John Burrill responded to his exhortations with a burst of defiance, or a volley of oaths; and, Evan received all comments upon his choice of a companion, with a sardonic smile, or a wild mocking laugh.
They had not been much together for the past few days, owing to the indisposition which had kept Evan away from their favorite haunts, but had not kept him away from his favorite beverage.
As Burrill entered his room, Evan received him with a shout of welcome, and for more than an hour they were closeted there, some times conversing in low, guarded tones, and sometimes bursting into roars of laughter, that penetrated even through the shut doors of Sybil's rooms, causing her to start nervously, and shiver as with a chill.
A little before sunset the carriage from Wardour deposited Constance and Mrs. Aliston at the door of this home of little harmony, and even Constance noted the unusual stillness, and whispered to her aunt, as they waited in the drawing room the appearance of Mrs. Lamotte: