“How long have you been like this, mother? What has brought it about?”
“Nothing in particular; nothing fresh,” she answered. “I have been getting nearer and nearer to it for years and years.”
“Is there no hope?”
“None. And oh, my darling, but for you I should be so glad to die. Sitting here in my loneliness for ever, with only heaven to look forward to, it seems that I have learnt to see a little already of what its rest will be.”
Francis pushed his hair from his brow, and left his hand there. He had loved his mother intensely, and the blow was cruel.
Quietly, holding his other hand in hers, she spoke of what Stephen Radcliffe had heard. Francis’s face turned to scarlet as he listened. But in that solemn hour he could not and would not tell a lie.
Yes, it was true; partly true, he said. He was not always so steady as he ought to be. Some of his acquaintances, young men studying law like himself, or medicine, or what not, were rather wild, and he had been the same. Drink?—well, yes; at times they did take more than might be quite needful. But they were not given to gambling: that was false.
“Francis,” she said, her heart beating wildly with its pain, “the worst of all is the drink. If once you suffer yourself to acquire a love for it, you may never leave it off. It is so insidious——”
“But I don’t love it, mother; I don’t care for it—and I am sure you must know that I would tell you nothing but truth now,” he interrupted. “I have only done as the others do. I’ll leave it off.”