As he looked up and
saw the rich, yearning face of his dark-eyed daughter tenderly
consulting his weakness, his heart burst forth; he leaned his head upon
the table and cried, between drink and grief:
"Darling, we are ruined!"
Mrs. Custis at once arose, and looked frightenedly at the Judge. Vesta
as quickly turned to the servants and motioned them to go.
"No, let them hear it!" raved Judge Custis, perceiving the motion. "They
are interested, like us. They must be sold, too. Faithful servants!
Perhaps it may warn them to escape in time!"
The servants, bred like ladies, quietly left the room.
Mrs. Custis, growing paler, exclaimed:
"Daniel Custis, have you lost everything in that furnace?"
"Everything!"
"And my money, too?"
"Yes."
"Merciful God!"
Before the weak lady could fall Vesta's arm was around her, and her
finger on the table-bell. Servants entered and Mrs. Custis was carried
out, her daughter following.
When Vesta returned her father was walking up and down the floor with
his long silk handkerchief in both hands, weeping bitterly, and speaking
broken syllables. She looked at him a moment with all the might of a
daughter, first called on to act alone in a great crisis. The feeling
she was wont to hold towards him, of perfect pride, had received a blow
in her mother's expression: "Your father's habits have mastered him
beyond reclamation."
Could this be true; that he, the grand, the kind, the gentleman, was
beneath the diver's reach, the plummet's sounding, where light could not
pierce, nor Hope overtake? _Her_ father, the first gentleman in
Somerset, a drunkard, going ever downward towards the gutter, and no ray
of heaven to beam upon his grave!
She saw his danger now: it was written on his face, where the image of
God shone dim that had once been crowned there.
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