"No; why?"
"He's been here, then, and only just gone. Come in, and let me lock the door."
Cherrie went up to her room, but not to sleep. She sat by the window, looking out on the quiet road, the black woods, and the moon's sickly, watery glimmer, while the long hours dragged slowly on, and her sister slept. She was thinking of the eventful to-morrow—the to-morrow that was to be the beginning of a new life to her.
CHAPTER XV.
SPRINGING THE MINE.
When Mr. Robert Nettleby informed his family circle that Charley Marsh was going to—well, to a certain dark spirit not to be lightly named in polite literature, he was about right. That young gentleman, mounted on the furious steed of extravagance, was galloping over the road to ruin at the rate of an express train.
Not alone, either; young McGregor, Tom Oaks, Esquire, and some dozen more young Speckportians, were keeping him company—and all ran nearly abreast in the dizzy race.
The terrible terminus—Disgrace, Misery, and Sudden Death—looked very near to some of them, very near, indeed, to the brother of Nathalie. He had taken to hard drinking of late, as a natural sequence of the other vice; gamblers must drink to drown remorse, and it was no unusual thing now for him to be helped home by pitying friends, and carried up-stairs to bed. How the mother cried and scolded; how the sister wept in passionate shame and sorrow in the silence of her own room; how he, the prodigal, suffered after, Heaven only knows, but it never came to anything.
Next day's splitting headache, and insuperable shame and remorse, must be drowned in brandy; that fatal stimulant brought the old delusive hopes—he must go back, he must win.