Dr. Warner, when they were seated, remarked, "It seems Lewis is engaged to dine with a school friend, so we are not to have either his company or Austin's to-day."
"So he told me," said Priscilla. "Do you know, father, where he is going to dine?"
Dr. Warner thought a moment, then replied, "I think he told me, but the name has escaped my memory. Some school-fellow, I suppose. At all events I know it's all right. A steady lad like Lewis can be trusted; and he so seldom dines out, I thought it best not to interfere, though I fear he will sit up too late studying to make up for lost time."
Priscilla spoke not. She felt sick at heart as she thought of the shock her father would sustain if bad accounts of Lewis should reach his cars. Oh, if she could only save him that pain!
On leaving the drawing-room after kissing both his sisters in the impulsive way we have described, Lewis Warner ran up to his room—that pleasant room where Austin and he had slept from the time they were little fellows, proud of the honour of being transferred from the nursery to a room of their own. He shut the door, and hastily opened drawer after drawer, taking some article of dress from each of them, then packed them into a travelling-bag. Then going to the mantel-piece, he took from it two photographs which stood thereon, and put them also into the bag. At the one, which was that of his father and mother together, he did not trust himself to look, but at the other, he glanced for a moment. It was a picture of his brother Austin standing with Priscilla beside him.
"Poor Austin!" he said to himself. "Noble fellow! What I am going to do will almost break his heart. And Prissy—" Ah! It was well for Priscilla that she did not hear the muttered words—"it's no good blaming any one, but Prissy could have hindered this, if she had tried. Now, if mother had only been alive—"
But at these words the boy's voice failed, and a great sob choked his utterance. He stood for a moment beside his white-curtained bed, where she had often stood, and bending over him had "kissed him good-night" so many a time.
And whilst all the time knowing the evil he was premeditating, shall we condemn it as a strange inconsistency that he knelt down at that bed and sobbed out the words, "Our Father which art in heaven, forgive me, and bless them all"?
"That was no real prayer," some reader will exclaim. Perhaps not. God knows. But at all events it was a cry heavenward from a young, erring, saddened heart, not yet altogether hardened in sin, round which "trailing clouds of glory" from God still hung unwilling to depart.
He started from his knees, closed the bag, and going softly downstairs, once more entered the drawing-room and stood a moment, just a moment, before his mother's picture. He gave one look, stifled a rising sob, and with a half-uttered cry of "Mother! mother!" he left the room, went out of the house, and took a cross-road to the town.