The ingratitude to himself touched him indeed but little; he was not given to making much of anything that was due to himself—­partly through carelessness, partly through generosity; but the absence in his brother of that delicate, intangible, indescribable sensitive-nerve which men call Honor, an absence that had never struck on him so vividly as it did to-night, troubled him, surprised him, oppressed him.

There is no science that can supply this defect to the temperament created without it; it may be taught a counterfeit, but it will never own a reality.

“Little one, you are heated, and don’t know what you say,” he began very gently, a few moments later, as he leaned forward and looked straight in the boy’s eyes.  “Don’t be down about this; you will pull through, never fear.  Listen to me; go down to Royal, and tell him all frankly.  I know him better than you; he will be savage for a second, but he would sell every stick and stone on the land for your sake; he will see you safe through this.  Only bear one thing in mind—­tell him all.  No half measures, no half confidences; tell him the worst, and ask his help.  You will not come back without it.”

Berkeley listened; his eyes shunning his brother’s, the red color darker on his face.

“Do as I say,” said Cecil, very gently still.  “Tell him, if you like, that it is through following my follies that you have come to grief; he will be sure to pity you then.”

There was a smile, a little sad, on his lips, as he said the last words, but it passed at once as he added: 

“Do your hear me? will you go?”

“If you want me—­yes.”

“On your word, now?”

“On my word.”

There was an impatience in the answer, a feverish eagerness in the way he assented that might have made the consent rather a means to evade the pressure than a genuine pledge to follow the advice; that darker, more evil, more defiant look was still upon his face, sweeping its youth away and leaving in its stead a wavering shadow.  He rose with a sudden movement; his tumbled hair, his disordered attire, his bloodshot eyes, his haggard look of sleeplessness and excitement in strange contrast with the easy perfection of Cecil’s dress and the calm languor of his attitude.  The boy was very young, and was not seasoned to his life and acclimatized to his ruin, like his elder brother.  He looked at him with a certain petulant envy; the envy of every young fellow for a man of the world.  “I beg your pardon for keeping you up, Bertie,” he said huskily.  “Good-night.”

Cecil gave a little yawn.

“Dear boy, it would have been better if you could have come in with the coffee.  Never be impulsive; don’t do a bit of good, and is such bad form!”

He spoke lightly, serenely; both because such was as much his nature as it was to breathe, and because his heart was heavy that he had to send away the young one without help, though he knew that the course he had made him adopt would serve him more permanently in the end.  But he leaned his hand a second on Berk’s shoulder, while for one single moment in his life he grew serious.