Then he lost them and went down into a mental gulf. He locked himself in his room, to be ever alone; thoughts came to him that he could not bear: he rose and filled a glass twice with brandy and drained it. He ran his hand through the tumbled light hair that Vesty had so loved, and reeled out of the room with a laugh on his lips and a flush on his face.
"Mother, I have lost my girl!"
"O Notely! however mistaken I have been, what have I loved, whom have I loved in all this world but you, my child? Do not break my heart!"
"No, no, mother!" said Notely, going and standing beside her; "I am your natural—natural—protector."
As he stood thus, looking out with his drunken yet bright and tender eyes, the child of her breast whom she had robbed, she laid her head on his shoulder and began to cry. "Why, mother!" he said, almost sobered for the instant. Never had this son seen this mother weep. He led her to a lounge.
"I think," he said, struggling for thought very seriously; he racked his stormy, fuddled brain for what would most please her. "Now, when shall we have a wedding, mother? Grace—Grace Langham."
"O Notely!" She tried to detain him with her hand.
"I'll go—go ask her," he said. He passed out with an easy exaggeration of his usual lordly air, debonair and high, and at the same time genial.
Grace was alone in the arbor, in her favorite hammock, with a book, when Notely came up.
The look she gave him was full of amusement and anger and disgust.