Mrs. Birtwell did not visit the Home on this morning to see how it
fared with Mr. Ridley as she had intended doing. The shadow of a
great evil had fallen upon her house. For some time she had seen its
approaches and felt the gathering gloom. If the reader will go back
over the incidents and characters of this story, he will recall a
scene between Mrs. Whitford and her son Ellis, the accepted lover of
Blanche Birtwell, and will remember with what earnestness the mother
sought to awaken in the mind of the young man a sense of danger,
going so far as to uncover a family secret and warn him of a taint
in his blood. It will also be remembered how the proud,
self-confident young man rejected, her warnings and entreaties, and
how wine betrayed him.
The humiliation that followed was deep, but not effective to save
him. Wine to his inherited appetite was like blood to the
wolf-nature. To touch it was to quicken into life an irrepressible
desire for more. But his pride fought against any acknowledgment of
his weakness, and particularly against so public an acknowledgment
as abstinence when all around him were taking wine. Every time he
went to a dinner or evening-party, or to any entertainment where
wine was to be served, he would go self-admonished to be on guard
against excess, but rarely was the admonition heeded. A single glass
so weakened his power of restraint that he could not hold back his
hand; and if it so happened that from any cause this limit was
forced upon him, as in making a morning or an evening call, the
stimulated appetite would surely draw his feet to the bar of some
fashionable saloon or hotel in order that it might secure a deeper
satisfaction.
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