ers; but I never approved of
you, sir. It's not man's work, to my mind, smearing canvas with paint,
and encouraging silly women to be vain of their faces."

"My portraits aren't considered to have that effect," returned Somerled;
"rather the contrary, in some cases. And I'm sorry you don't approve of
me, because that makes a bad opening for what I've come to say. However,
it can't be helped. I know Mrs. Ballantree MacDonald slightly; met her
in America----"

"If you think an acquaintance with that woman will recommend you to me,
sir, you are mightily mistaken," was the answer he got.

"I mention it to make you understand why, when I met her daughter last
night, I felt it my duty to do what I could, being of the same name and
not quite a stranger to the family."

"Oh, you felt it your duty! Then you're the person mentioned in a letter
I received from a certain Mrs. West, according to herself a writer of
books. I do not read her sort of books, and never heard of her. 'Motor
novels' indeed! What worse than nonsense! Little enough sense fools must
have to buy them! If you have come from this Mrs. West, you can tell her
from me, as she has made her bed she may lie in it. She has not taken
under her roof my granddaughter, but the daughter of Mrs. Ballantree
MacDonald, the play actress. I did my best for the girl, striving to
bring her up to be a good and modest woman, despite the bad blood of the
mother who broke my son's heart and killed him, who did what she could,
and has been doing what she could in the years since, to disgrace our
house. I might have known I should strive in vain, and I did know at
heart. Vanity and extravagance and fondness of pleasure were Barbara
Ballantree's undoing. I preserved her daughter from those dangers, and
gave her a religious education. Levity was sternly rebuked in her. She
had no young acquaintances to teach her foolishness, or tell her of her
mother's sin. She was allowed no money to fritter away on vanities, no
silly novels to read, such as those your friends write, no frivolous
pursuits which could distract her mind from duty--yet she is her mother
over again, and, like her mother, runs away from my house by stealth, in
the dead of night."

"It wasn't ten o'clock when I met her in the railway station," Somerled
defended the absent. "She was then not very stealthily seeking a train
for London, where she expected to find her mother. Mrs. West has written
you, I know, and told you ev