“If that be your feeling, Charles,” exclaimed Fontonore, “you are one who should never touch a card. There is the fuel ready in your heart. Oh, beware of letting a spark fall upon it! How can you pray not to be led into temptation, without mocking the great Being whom you address, if you, with your eyes open, seek the company and the amusements which you know in themselves to be temptation? You would be as one who, because the day was fair and the water inviting, would venture in a boat close to a dangerous whirlpool, and, while he felt the strong current drawing him in, would content himself with praying for some wind from heaven to save him from the peril into which he had thrown himself.”
“The difference here,” observed Charles, “is, that I can stop when I like.”
“Every gambler begins by thinking that he can stop when he likes, till he finds that habit and passion are too strong to be mastered. Oh, Charley! my Charley!” continued Ernest, with emotion, “much as I love you, my own only brother, I had rather lose you—rather see you laid in your grave, than living the life of a gambler!”
“You shall never see me a gambler,—I mean, God helping me,” replied Charles, touched and gratified by his brother’s anxiety; “I will give up play after this evening.”
“Do not go this evening; it is playing on the brink of temptation.”
“You can write, and make your excuse. To-morrow is Christmas day, when we should especially remember the mercy that opened to us the gate of salvation, and our duties as pilgrims and soldiers of the Cross. You would not spend this evening amongst those whom you yourself call citizens of Vanity Fair?”
“I will not write, then; I will call—it is more courteous.”
“I see that you have little trust in me,” said Charles, but without any emotion of anger. “Perhaps, Ernest, you know me better than I do myself: but I think that in this case I only do right to go; therefore it is not wilfully throwing myself into temptation.”
Charles found Aleck Fitzwigram at the house of Leo Chamberlain, his friend, and after shaking hands with them both, told them that he had come to say that circumstances would prevent his joining them that evening.
“Then you’ll come to-morrow—no, we dine out then, and the day after there’s the theatre; but on Saturday, at any rate, we shall expect you here; you know that you must give us our revenge.”