uty, though it cost her the intensest suffering.

CHAPTER XXV.

"I HAVE come," said Mrs. Whitford, after she was seated and had
composed herself, "to perform the saddest duty of my whole life."

She paused, her white lips quivering, then rallied her strength and
went on:

"Even to dishonor my son."

She caught her breath with a great sob, and remained silent for nearly
half a minute, sitting so still that she seemed like one dead. In that
brief time she had chained down her overwrought feelings and could
speak without a tremor in her voice.

"I have come to say," she now went on, "that this marriage must not
take place. Its consummation would be a great wrong, and entail upon
your daughter a life of misery. My son is falling into habits that
will, I sadly fear, drag him down to hopeless ruin. I have watched the
formation and growth of this habit with a solicitude that has for a
long time robbed my life of its sweetness. All the while I see him
drifting away from me, and I am powerless to hold him back. Every day
he gets farther off, and every day my heart grows heavier with sorrow.
Can nothing be done? Alas! nothing, I fear; and I must tell you why,
Mrs. Birtwell. It is best that you should see the case as hopeless, and
save your daughter if you can."

She paused again for a few moments, and then continued:

"It is not with my son as with most young men. He has something more to
guard against than the ordinary temptations of society. There is, as
you may possibly know, a taint in his blood--the taint of hereditary
intemperance. I warned him of this and implored him to abjure wine and
all other drinks that intoxicate, but he was proud and sensitive as
well as confident in his own strength. He began to imagine that
everybody knew the family secret I had revealed to him, and that if he
refused wine in public it would be attributed to his fear of arousing a
sleeping appetite which when fully awake and active might prove too
strong for him, and so he often drank in a kind of bravado spirit. He
would be a man and let every one see that he could hold the mastery
over himself. It was a dangerous experiment for him, as I knew it would
be, and has failed."

Mrs. Whitford broke down and sobbed in an uncontrollable passion of
grief. Then, rising, she said:

"I have done a simple duty, Mrs. Birtwell. How hard the task has been
you can never know, for through a trial like mine you will never have
to pass. It now