shaking a fist in my father's face.

"Forgotten!" he shouted. Was it you who sent me here and had me tied in
the cellar, and left me chewing at the rope, and set this pirate on me?
Mother of God! Captain Shelton! Is this a joke you are playing--"

"Only a very regrettable error," said my father. "A mistake of my son's.
Pray calm yourself, Ives. It is quite all right. My son, this is
Mademoiselle's brother."

"Her brother!" I cried.

"And who the devil did you think I was?" He walked slowly towards me.
"Have you no perceptions?"

He would have continued further, if my father had not laid a hand
on his arm.

"Gently, Ives," he said. "You know I would not treat you so. Give him the
paper, my son. He is the one who should have it."

I stared at my father in blank astonishment, but before I could speak, he
had continued.

"I know what you are thinking. What was the use of all this comedy? Why
should I have deceived you? I was only running true to form, my son,
which is the only thing left to do when life tastes bitter. Do you not
understand? But you do not. Your palate is unused yet to gall and
wormwood. Only wait, my son--"

He raised his hand slowly, as though tilting an imaginary glass to his
lips.

"Only wait. They will offer you the cup some day, and we were always
heavy drinkers. Pray God that you will stand it with a better grace than
I--that you will forget the sting and rancor of it, and not carry it with
you through the years."

His eyes grew brighter as he spoke, and his features were suddenly mobile
and expressive.

"She said she believed it. She threw their lies in my face. She lashed me
with them, and my blood was hotter then than now. She would not listen,
and I forgot it was a woman's way. How was I to know it was only impulse?
I ask you--how was I to know? Was I a man to crawl back, and ask her
forgiveness, to offer some miserable excuse she would not credit? And
you, brought into manhood to believe I was a thief--was I to stand your
flinging back my denial? Was I to pose as the picture of injured
innocence, and beg you the favor of believing? I would not have expected
it of you, my son. By heaven, it would have stuck in my throat. I had
gone my way too long, and the draught still tasted bitter. It burned,
burned as I never thought it would again, when I first saw you standing
watching me. Indeed it is only now that its taste has wholly gone--only
now that I see what I have done, now when t