"Sir, I carried you in my arms when you were a child; your father, the very day he died, told me to give you a word of warning, if I saw you going wrong; let that be my excuse for speaking to you as you may think I have no right to do," pleaded Reuben, the tears standing in his faithful old eyes. "Do not go out again, sir; for this night, at any rate, stay away from the set; they are nothing but blacklegs. There's that Piggott waiting for you outside the door."
"Reuben, don't be a fool. How dare you say my friends are blacklegs?"
"They are so, sir. And you are losing your substance to them; and it won't be their fault if they don't get it all."
Robert, eager to go out to his ruin, hot with wine, would not waste more words. He moved to the door, but Reuben moved more quickly than he, and stood with his back against it.
"What farce is this?" cried Robert, in his temper. "Stand away from the door, or I shall be tempted to fling you from it."
"Oh, sir, hear reason!" And the man's manner was so painfully urgent, that a half-doubt crossed his master's mind whether he could know what it was he was about to stake. "Three or four and twenty years ago, Mr. Robert—I'm not sure as to a year—I stood, in like manner, praying your uncle Claude not to go out to his ruin. He had come to London, sir, as fine and generous a young man as you, and the gamblers got hold of him, and drew him into their ways, and stuck to him like a leech, till all he had was gone. Moat Grange was played away, mortgaged, or bartered, or whatever it might be, for the term of his life; there's a clause in its deeds, as I take it you know, sir, that prevents its owner from encumbering it for longer—and, perhaps, that's usual with other estates——"
"You are an idiot, Reuben," interrupted Robert, his tone less fierce.
"A night came when Mr. Claude was half mad," continued Reuben, unheeding the interruption. "I saw he was; and I stood before him, and prayed him not to go out with them, as I am now praying you. It was of no use, and he went. If I tell you what that night brought forth, sir, will you regard it as a warning?"
"What did it bring forth?" demanded Robert, arrested to interest.
"I will tell you, sir, if you will take warning by it, and break with those gamblers this night, and never go amongst them more. Will you promise, Mr. Robert?"