Tom went more and more to the Choughs, and Patty noticed a change in the youth--a change that half-fascinated and half-repelled her.
Then, for the next few days, Tom plunged deeper and deeper downwards. He left off pulling on the river, shunned his old friends, and lived with a set of men who were ready enough to let him share all their brutal orgies.
Drysdale, with whom Tom had been on good terms, noted the difference, and advised him "to cut the Choughs business."
"You're not the sort of a fellow to go in for this kind of thing," he said. "I'll be hanged if it won't kill you, or make a devil of you before long! Make up your mind to cut the whole concern, old fellow!"
"I'm awfully wretched, Drysdale," was all Tom could say.
All the same, Tom could not follow Drysdale's advice at once and break off his visits to the Choughs altogether.
The real crisis was over. He had managed to pass through the eye of the storm, and was drifting into the skirts of it, conscious of an escape from utter shipwreck.
His visits to the Choughs became shorter; he never stayed behind now after the other men, and avoided interviews with Patty alone as diligently as he had sought them before.
Patty, unable to account for this fresh change of manner, was piqued, and ready to revenge herself in a hundred little ways. If she had been really in love with him it would have been a different matter; but she was not. In the last six weeks she certainly had often had visions of the pleasures of being a lady and keeping servants, but her liking was not more than skin deep.
Of late, indeed, she had been much more frightened than attracted by the conduct of her admirer, and really felt it a relief, notwithstanding her pique, when he retired into a less demonstrative state.