Lavendar raised an admonishing hand. "Careful, John."

"He means," Carl said to his wife, quietly, though his face was
gray--"he means he wants us to acknowledge him. Mary, I'm willing. Are
you?"

Doctor Lavendar lifted his bowed head, and his old eyes were suddenly
eager with hope. Johnny's mother stood looking at her child, her face
twisted with tears.

"_Must_ I, to get him?" she gasped.

"No," Johnny said; "it is quite unnecessary." He smiled, so cruelly that
his father's hands clenched; but Mary only said, in passionate relief,
"Oh, you are good!" And the hope in Doctor Lavendar's eyes flickered
out.

"Nothing will ever be known?" her son repeated, still smiling. "Well,
then, Mrs. Robertson, I thank you for 'nothing.'"

Doctor Lavendar frowned, and Mary recoiled, with a sort of moan. Carl
Robertson cried out:

"Stop! You shall not speak so to your mother! I'm ashamed of you, sir!"

But the mother ran forward and caught at her son's arm. "Oh, but I will
make it known! I will say who you are! I'll say you are mine! I will--I
will--"

"You can't, for I'm not," he said.

She was clinging to him, but he looked over her head, eye to eye with
his father. "How can I be her son, when she let people here in Old
Chester believe that Aunt Lydia--"

"Johnny," said Doctor Lavendar, "it didn't make the slightest difference
to Miss Lydia."

The young man turned upon him. "Doctor Lavendar, these two people didn't
own me, even when a pack of fools believed--" He choked over what the
fools believed. "They let them think _that_ of Aunt Lydia! As for
this--this lady being my 'mother'-- What's 'mother' but a word? Aunt
Lydia may not be my mother, but I am her son. Yes--yes--I am."

"You are," Doctor Lavendar agreed.

John turned and looked at his father. "I'm sorry for _him_," he said to
Doctor Lavendar.

"We will acknowledge you to-morrow," Carl Robertson said.

"I won't acknowledge you," his son flung back at him. "All these years
you have hidden behind Aunty. Stay hidden. I won't betray you."

Mary had dropped down into her father's chair; her face was covered by
her hands on the desk. They heard her sob. Her husband bent over her and
put his arms about her.

"Mary," he said, in a whisper, "forgive me; I brought it on you--my poor
Mary!" Then he stood up and looked at his son in suffering silence. "I
don't blame you," he said, simply.

At that, suddenly, John Smith broke. The pain of it all had begun to
pene