The night passed. In the morning Oscar went to South Audley Street to breakfast. Robert was looking ill and anxious. "Been making a night of it?" said Oscar, lightly. "You look as though you had." "Yes, I was late. Pour out the coffee, will you, Oscar?" His own hands were shaking. Oscar saw it as Robert opened his letters. One of them bore the Netherleigh postmark, and was from Farmer Lee. Oscar hardly knew how to open the ball, or what to say for the best. "I'm sure something is disturbing you, Robert. You have had no sleep; that's easy to be seen. What pursuit can you have that it should keep you up all night!" "One is never at a loss to kill time in London." "I suppose not, if it has to be killed. But I did not know it was necessary to kill that which ought to be spent in sleep. One would think you passed your nights at the gaming-table, Robert." The words startled him, and a flush rose to his pallid features. Oscar was gazing at him steadily. "Robert, you look conscious. Have you learnt to gamble?" "Oh, it's nothing," said Robert, confusedly. "I may play a little now and then." "Do not shirk the question. _Have you taken to play?_" "A little, I tell you. Never mind. It's my own affair." "You were playing last night?" "Well--yes, I was. Very little." "Lose or win?" asked Oscar, carelessly. "Oh, I lost," answered Robert. "The luck was against me." "Now, my good fellow, do you know what you had best do? Go home to Moat Grange, and get out of this set; I know what gamesters are; they never let a pigeon off till he is stripped of his last feather. Leave with me for the Grange today, and cheat them; and stop there until the mania for play shall have left you, though it should be years to come." Ah, how heartily Robert Dalrymple wished in his heart that he could do it!--that he could break through the net in which he was involved, in more ways than one! "I cannot go to Moat Grange," he answered. "Your reasons." "Because I must stay where I am. I wish I had never come--never set up these chambers; I do wish that. But, as I did so, here I am fixed." "I cannot think why you did come--flying from your home as soon as your father was under ground. Had you succeeded to twenty thousand a-year, you could but have made hot haste to launch out in the metropolis." "I did not come to launch out," returned Robert, angrily. "I came to get rid of myself. It was so wretched down there." Oscar stared. "What made it so?" "The remembrance of my father. Every face I met, every stick and stone about the place seemed to reproach me with his death. And justly. But for my carelessness he would not have died." "Well, that is all past and gone, Robert. You shall come back to the Grange with me. You will be safe there." "No. It is too late." "It is not too late. What do you mean? If----" "I tell you it is too late," burst out Robert, in a sharp tone: and Oscar thought it was full of anguish.