ge door.

Sir Godfrey was out, and would not be back until dinner time; so, as
soon as they had taken their things off, Lady Raleigh ordered tea in her
own room, and there, as briefly as was consistent with the gravity of
the news she had to tell, she told Enid everything that her husband had
heard from Sir Arthur.

Enid, although she flushed slightly at certain portions of the
narrative, listened to the story with a calmness which somewhat
surprised her mother.

The little damsel for whose kisses those two boys had fought ten or
eleven years ago, had now grown into a fair and stately maiden of
eighteen, very dainty and desirable to look upon, and withal possessing
a dignity which only comes by birth and breeding and that larger
training and closer contact with the world which modern girls of her
class enjoy. Young as she was, hers was not the innocence of ignorance.
She had lived too late in the century, and had already been too far
afield in the world for that.

"It comes to this, then," she said quietly, almost hardly, "instead of
being dead, as we have believed all along, Vane's mother is alive; an
imbecile who has become so through drink, and who seems to have
misbehaved herself very badly when Vane was a baby. She is in an asylum,
and will probably remain there till she dies. No one but ourselves and
this interesting young person, Miss Carol Vane, appears to know anything
about it, and I really don't see why Vane is to be held responsible for
his mother's insanity--for I suppose that's what it comes to.

"And then there is Miss Carol herself. Of course she's not a
particularly desirable family connection; but I don't suppose Vane would
expect me to meet her, much less fall upon her neck and greet her as his
long-lost sister. I suppose, too, that between us we could manage to do
something for her, and put her in a more respectable way of living and
induce her to hold her tongue.

"As for Vane getting drunk that night, of course it's very improper and
all that sort of thing from the Sunday School point of view; but I don't
suppose he was the only undergraduate who took too much to drink that
night. Probably several hundreds of them did, and I daresay a good many
of them were either engaged or going to be. Would they consider that a
reason why they should go and break off their engagements? I'm afraid
there wouldn't be many marriages nowadays if engagements were broken off
on that account.

"Of course, mam,