When Mrs. Dalrymple returned home on Friday evening from dining at Court Netherleigh, she did not say much to Oscar about her son; but on the following morning, after breakfast, Oscar having slept at the Grange, she questioned him. Without making exactly the worst of it, Oscar disclosed the truth—that is, that Robert was undoubtedly falling into trouble through his gambling habits. He deemed it lay in his duty to tell this; and Mrs. Dalrymple, as the reader must remember, had been already warned by Reuben's letter. That letter had been a great shock to her; she knew how fatal the vice had already proved in the family.
It was a lovely midsummer morning, and she and Selina were sitting on the bench under the great elm-tree. The bees were humming, the butterflies sporting, the birds singing around them. The grass was green at foot; overhead, the blue sky could be seen through the branches of the flickering trees. Oscar leaned against the trunk of an opposite tree as he talked to them.
"What can be done?—what can be done?" exclaimed Mrs. Dalrymple, clasping her hands in distress. "Oscar, you ought to have brought him down with you."
"He positively refused to come. I might as well have tried to bring a mountain. Something ought to be done, and must be done," added Oscar; "you are quite right in saying that. The question is—what is it that can be?"
"The root of the evil lies in his having gone to London," said Mrs. Dalrymple. "He ought to have taken up his own proper station here, and ourselves have found a house elsewhere. But, in his chivalrous affection for me, Robert would listen to no remonstrance; some implied promise to his father, when he was on his death-bed, I believe, swayed him. Robert was always so good-hearted—and so impulsive. He—here is Alice," she broke off, in lowered tones.
Alice, with her sweet face, her slight figure, and her quite perceptible limp, came across the grass. "May I not be admitted to the conference?" she asked pleadingly. "I know you are talking of Robert."
"Oh, my dear, it is nothing that you need trouble yourself about," said her mother, soothingly. "Go back to your tatting."
"I have my tatting with me. Mamma—Oscar—do you not see that it will be well for me to hear what there is to hear. I know something is wrong about Robert; I could not sleep all last night, no, nor the night before, for dwelling on it. Whatever there is to hear, it cannot make me more anxious than I am—and it would end this suspense."
"Well, well, sit down," said Mrs. Dalrymple, giving way. "I hardly know myself how much or how little of evil there is to hear, Alice." And she went on to speak without reservation: "Robert had fallen into gambling habits; and there was no telling how deeply. All his own means were undoubtedly gone. Of course things must get worse night by night," she concluded. "Any night he may stake the Grange."
"Stake the Grange!" echoed Alice. "Mamma, what do you mean?"