“Lost it?” she repeated, and then, the truth flashing on her suddenly, she cried in a frightened whisper: “O Marmaduke! you have not been gambling? Oh! tell me it’s not true.” She caught hold of his arm, and, clinging to it, looked into his face, scared and white.
“Nonsense, Nell! I thought you were a girl of sense,” he exclaimed pettishly, disengaging himself and pushing back the bolt. “Let me be off; tell Stephen I had not change, so his friend must wait till he can go and tip him himself.”
“No, no; he may be hungry, poor man. Stay, I think I have ten shillings here,” said Nelly; and she pulled out her porte-monnaie, and picked four half-crowns from the promiscuous heap of smaller coins. “Take these; I will tell Stephen you will give the ten shillings.”
Her hand trembled as she dropped the money into Marmaduke’s pocket. He was about to resist; but there was something peremptory, a touch of that will of her own, in her manner that deterred him.
“I’m sorry I said anything about it; I should not if I thought you would have minded it so much,” he observed.
“Minded it? O Marmaduke! Minded your taking to gambling?”
“Tush! Don’t talk nonsense! A man isn’t a gambler because once in a way he loses a twenty-pound note.”
And with this he brushed past her, and closed the hall-door with a loud bang.
Nelly did not sit down on one of the hall chairs and cry. She felt mightily inclined to do so; but she struggled against the weakness and overcame it. Walking quietly up the stairs, she hummed a few bars of a favorite air as she passed the door of Stephen’s sitting-room, and went on to her own room on the story above. But even here, safe and alone, the tears were bravely held back. She would not cry; she would not be seen with red eyes that would betray her brother; she would do her very utmost to rescue him, to screen him even now. While she is wrestling and pleading in the silence of her own room, let us follow the gambler to Red Pepper Lane.