“After what had passed!  Was it the parting with the stone?”

“Not only.  I got a few words with Lady Tyrrell.  She told me that early impressions had given Lena a kind of fanatical horror of betting, and that she had long ago made a sort of vow against a betting man.  Lady Tyrrell said she had laughed at it, but had no notion it was seriously meant; and I—­I never even heard of it!”

“Nor are you a betting man, my Frank.”

“Ay! mother, you have not heard all.”

“You are not in a scrape, my boy?”

“Yes, I am.  You see I lost my head after the pebble transaction.  I couldn’t stand small talk, or bear to go near Raymond, so I got among some other fellows with Sir Harry—­”

“And excitement and distress led you on?”

“I don’t know what came over me.  I could not stand still for fear I should feel.  I must be mad on something.  Then, that mare of Duncombe’s, poor fellow, seemed a personal affair to us all; and Sir Harry, and a few other knowing old hands, went working one up, till betting higher and higher seemed the only way of supporting Duncombe, besides relieving one’s feelings.  I know it was being no end of a fool; but you haven’t felt it, mother!”

“And Sir Harry took your bets?”

“One must fare and fare alike,” said Frank.

“How much have you lost?”

“I’ve lost Lena, that’s all I know,” said the poor boy; but he produced his book, and the sum appalled him.  “Mother,” he said in a broken voice, “there’s no fear of its happening again.  I can never feel like this again.  I know it is the first time one of your sons has served you so, and I can’t even talk of sorrow, it seems all swallowed up in the other matter.  But if you will help me to meet it, I will pay you back ten or twenty pounds every quarter.”

“I think I can, Frankie.  I had something in hand towards my own possible flitting.  Here is the key of my desk.  Bring me my banker’s book and my cheque book.”

“Mother! mother!” he cried, catching her hand and kissing it, “what a mother you are!”

“You understand,” she said, “that it is because I believe you were not master of yourself, and that this is the exception, not the habit, that I am willing to do all I can for you.”

“The habit!  No, indeed!  I never staked more than a box of gloves before; but what’s the good, if she has made a vow against me?”

Mrs. Poynsett was silent for a few moments, then she said, “My poor boy, I believe you are both victims of a plot.  I suspect that Camilla Tyrrell purposely let you see that pebble-token and be goaded into gambling, that she might have a story to tell her sister, when she had failed to shake her constancy and principle in any other way.”

“Mother, that would make her out a fiend.  She has been my good and candid friend all along.  You don’t know her.”

“What would a friend have done by you yesterday?”