open and bleeding again. All the
pride and hope and love of his life were centred now on his brilliant
son. A few hours before he had learnt that his mother had transmitted to
him the terrible, perhaps the fatal taint of inherited alcoholism; and
now he had just proved beyond doubt that Vane's half-sister--for she was
that in blood if not in law--was what she had just so frankly, so
defiantly even, admitted herself to be.

And yet, how sweet and dainty she looked as she stood there before him,
a bright flush on her cheeks and a soft, regretful expression in those
big hazel eyes which were so wonderfully like _hers_! No one seeing her
and Vane together could possibly take them for anything but brother and
sister--and but for this marvellous likeness; but for the subtle
instinct of kindred blood which had spoken in this outcast's heart the
night before, would not a still deeper depth have opened in the hell of
that old infamy? There was at least that to be thankful for.

"I suppose you don't know where she is now--and don't care, most
likely?" Carol added, raising her eyes almost timidly to his.

"I do," he replied, slowly, "To tell you the truth, I was one of the men
who took her away from the house in the Rue St. Jean----"

"You were!" she exclaimed, recoiling a little from him. "Then it was
really you who turned me out homeless into the streets of Paris?"

"Yes, it was, I regret to say," he replied, almost humbly, "but I need
hardly tell you that I did it in complete ignorance. My ---- your mother
was making my name, my son's name, a scandal throughout Europe. She was
a hopeless dipsomaniac. I had, believe me, I had suffered for years all
that an honourable man could endure rather than blast my son's prospects
in life by taking proceedings for divorce, and so proclaiming to the
world that he was the son of such a woman."

"Yes," said Carol, quietly, with a little catch in her voice, "I
understand--such a woman as I suppose I shall be some day. Of course, it
was very hard on you and your son. And I don't suppose it made much
difference to me after all. She'd have sold me to someone as soon as I
was old enough; and instead of that I had to sell myself. When women
take to drink like that they don't care about anything. What did you do
with her?"

"The man with me," replied Sir Arthur, "was an officer of the French
Courts. He had a warrant authorising her detention in a home for chronic
inebriates. She is there sti